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San Antonio Missions
Five Spanish colonial missions along the San Antonio River
Strung along the San Antonio River in Texas, five Spanish colonial missions make up the largest concentration of such missions in North America. Four of them, Concepción, San José, San Juan and Espada, form San Antonio Missions National Historical Park, and the fifth, Mission San Antonio de Valero, is better known as the Alamo. Franciscan friars established them in the early 1700s to convert the region's Coahuiltecan peoples and to anchor Spain's claim to Texas against the French.
The missions were self-contained communities with churches, workshops, granaries and farms fed by acequias, irrigation ditches dug by mission residents. The Espada Aqueduct, finished around 1745, still carries water over a creek more than 270 years later. Portions of the four park missions remain active Catholic parishes, and the descendants of mission families still live in San Antonio. In 2015 the five missions together were named a UNESCO World Heritage Site, the first in Texas.