San Pedro Creek

Short as it is, the creek set the city's site. San Pedro Creek rises in springs in present San Pedro Park and runs about two miles southeast, now through an artificial channel, to the San Antonio River. Members of the Ramón expedition named the springs on May 14, 1716, and their location fixed the sites of both the villa of San Fernando de Béxar and Mission San Antonio de Valero. Valero's own Acequia Madre, dug between 1718 and 1744, ran from San Pedro Springs through the town to the farmlands below.

What the plaque says

San Pedro Creek In 1709 Franciscan fathers Antonio Olivares and Isidro Espinosa came upon an Indian campsite at the natural springs (1.4 miles north) which form the headwaters of this creek. They named the creek San Pedro and noted the area as a superior site for a settlement. On May 1, 1718, Olivares and Martin de Alarcon, Spanish governor of Coahuila and Texas, founded Mission San Antonio de Valero near here on San Pedro Creek. On May 5, 1718 Alarcon selected a site near San Pedro Springs for a presidio and the founding of Villa de Bejar "at the place called San Antonio." An irrigation canal (acequia) system, began in the 1720s from San Pedro Springs and extending south along the creek, provided water for the families of the first settlers, presidio soldiers, and Canary Island settlers. San Antonio's first streetcar line, which began in 1878, operated from Alamo Plaza to San Pedro Springs, then a popular tourist destination and site of numerous social and cultural events. The San Pedro Springs, creek, and irrigation system played vital roles in the founding and early development of the Spanish presidio and mission settlement and royally decreed municipality which became the city of San Antonio. Sesquicentennial of Texas Statehood 1845-1995

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Spanish Governor's Palace — 0.5 mi
  The last visible piece of the Presidio San Antonio de Béxar: a presidio captain's house with a 1749 keystone, a century as shops and saloons, and a romantic 1930 restoration.
• San Fernando Cathedral — 0.5 mi
  The Canary Islanders' parish church on Main Plaza, where Bowie married and Santa Anna raised a red flag, rebuilt in Gothic Revival around the walls of the 1750s church.
• Casa Navarro State Historic Site — 0.6 mi
  The adobe and caliche-block home of José Antonio Navarro, a native-born signer of the 1836 declaration, and the last remnant of the Tejano neighborhood called Laredito.
• The Alamo — 0.8 mi
  Mission San Antonio de Valero before it was a fort: a church its builders never finished, a thirteen-day siege in 1836, and the Army gable of 1850-52 that became its emblem.

More markers nearby

• Italian American Community in San Antonio — steps away
• Central Christian Church — 0.3 mi
• Site of Rincon/Douglass School — 0.3 mi
• Emma Tenayuca — 0.4 mi