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      Initially made of brush, straw, and mud, Mission San José’s first buildings were soon replaced by large stone structures that included offices, a dining room, a pantry, and guest rooms. The main portion of the compound was enclosed in a thick outer wall that had built into it rooms for 350 native residents. Its impressive limestone church—which stands to this day and was distinguished by a dome, two towers, and an elaborately carved facade—was completed in 1768. The remarkable complex reached its full extent by 1782. It was the largest and most elaborate of the San Antonio religious communities, dubbed “Queen of the Missions.”

      “It is, in truth, the first mission in America,” friar Juan Agustín Morfí wrote in his journal. “In point of beauty, plan, and strength … there is not a presidio along the entire frontier line that can compare with it.” Two soldiers from the nearby presidio of San Antonio de Bexar helped provide security for the complex and trained its residents in the use of firearms and artillery.

      Like the other local missions, Mission San José turned over its lands to its resident Indians in 1794, and religious activities at the site were officially ended in 1824. In the years that followed, the mission fell into disrepair and its buildings were variously abandoned or occupied by soldiers, vagabonds, and bandits. It was restored in the 1920s and 1930s, much of it by the federal government’s Works Progress Administration; declared a State Historical Site in 1941; and added to the National Register of Historic Places in 1978.

      On the night of July 31–August 1, 2000, thieves stole three Spanish Colonial–era statues that sat at the altar of the church at Mission San José. These painted, carved wooden statues, each of which stood 3 and 4 feet in height, are considered priceless because of their age and profound historical and religious significance, but their fate remains unknown.

      MISSION ESPADA

      MISSION ESPADA WAS ESTABLISHED on a spot near the San Antonio River in 1731, having been moved from its original location in what is now Augusta, Texas—about 150 miles north of present-day Houston—where it had enjoyed a tumultuous and bloody history since 1690. Its Franciscan founders built a friary in 1745 and completed the church in 1756.

      Missionaries at the site converted the resident Coahuiltecan Indians to Christianity and instructed them in the principles of architecture and masonry, blacksmithing, brick and tile making, farming and ranching, and spinning and weaving.

      By the time secularization of the San Antonio missions began in 1794, Mission Espada was impoverished, had declined badly, and had just 15 families still associated with it, each of which was granted a parcel of land. It functioned communally for a time, with the residents sharing supplies and equipment. Misfortune befell the community in 1826, first when a band of Comanches raided the cornfields and slaughtered all the livestock, and later when a kitchen fire destroyed most of its buildings.

      During the period 1858–1907, a Claretian priest named Francis Bouchu resided at the mission and restored many of the collapsing buildings inside the compound, but progress slowed when he departed and the church was temporarily closed for repairs. It was reopened in 1915 by priests from the Diocese of San Antonio, and a school was established inside the compound by nuns from the Order of the Incarnate Word and Blessed Sacrament. They ran the school for more than five decades until 1967, when it was shut down and the Franciscans once again took charge of Mission Espada.

      Today, visitors to the mission can see the best-preserved example of a historic Spanish Colonial acequia, which includes the still-working Espada aqueduct and dam. Its main ditch continues to carry water to the mission and its former farmlands and is still used by residents of the local area.

      MISSION SAN JUAN

      ORIGINALLY FOUNDED IN 1716 as La Misión San José de los Nazonis in East Texas, Mission San Juan Capistrano also was established by Spanish Franciscans on the eastern banks of the San Antonio River in 1731. It was named for Saint John of Capistrano, a 15th-century theologian and warrior priest who resided in the Abruzzo region of Italy.

      The missionaries constructed San Juan’s first chapel from mud and brush and eventually added to it a tower containing two bells. Then, around 1756, they replaced this primitive building with a long hall with a flat roof and a more substantial belfry that remains on the site to this day. They also constructed a dam in order to provide water for the mission’s acequia irrigation system.

      “San Juan was a self-sustaining community. Within the compound, Indian artisans produced iron tools, cloth, and prepared hides,” Kathy Weiser writes in her Legends of America online magazine. “Orchards and gardens outside the walls provided melons, pumpkins, grapes, and peppers. Beyond the mission complex, Indian farmers cultivated corn, beans, squash, sweet potatoes, and sugar cane in irrigated fields …. By the mid-1700s, San Juan, with its rich farm and pasturelands, was a regional supplier of agricultural produce. With its surplus, San Juan established a trade network stretching east to Louisiana and south to Coahuila, Mexico. This thriving economy helped the mission to survive epidemics and Indian attacks in its final years.”

      Despite its prosperity, however, Mission San Juan was not able to maintain a large native population, and that affected its viability. At its height in 1756, for example, some 265 Coahuiltecan Indian neophytes lived at the mission, but 34 years later only 58 lived there. It was then that the missionaries broke ground on a larger church building on the east side of the complex, but they were never able to complete it. Work on it was abandoned and, eventually, it was used as a crypt for native residents.

      Mission San Juan was secularized in 1794 and had a decreasing level of religious activity until 1824, when it ended altogether. The site was largely abandoned until 1840, when priests from the Diocese of San Antonio resumed conducting mass at it.

      In 1934, some of the Indian quarters and the foundations of the unfinished church were unearthed as part of a public works project. Then, in the 1960s, the chapel, priests’ quarters, and other structures were reconstructed. Today most of the original plaza remains within the courtyard walls and authentically depicts the floor plan and layout. Members of the Claretian and Redemptorist orders also held services at the site until 1967, when the Franciscans once again took control of the mission.

      MISSION CONCEPCIÓN

      FRANCISCAN FRIARS ESTABLISHED Misión Nuestra Señora de la Purísima Concepción de Acuña, more commonly referred to simply as Mission Concepción, near the San Antonio River in 1731. Most of the native people in the mission were Pajalats, a local tribe that used to live in the area south of San Antonio, and their chiefs served as governors of the affiliated Indian community.

      At least one large battle took place between Spanish settlers and Indians here, resulting in great loss of life, in the 1700s. Then, on October 28, 1835, the first significant battle of the Texas Revolution was fought between Texian insurgents, led by James Bowie and James Fannin, and Mexican soldiers under the command of Colonel Domingo Ugartechea. About 90 of the Texians had encamped near the mission while searching for a suitable and relatively safe place for the remainder of the army to rest when they were attacked by a mixed force of about 275 Mexican infantry, cavalry, and artillery. The Texians took cover in a U-shaped gully and, between their defensive position and superior small arms, drove off the Mexican troops in the ensuing 30-minute battle, winning the Battle of Concepción. One Texian and as many as 76 Mexican troops were slain during the skirmish.

      On October 31, 1984, the San Antonio Express-News ran a story that described activity experienced in the area around Mission Concepción and some of the possible reasons for it. “Some 300 soldiers died in that area during an 18th-century battle near the mission. A Dr. Navarro, who lived there around the turn of the century, is said to have murdered Juana, who was either his live-in maid or his lover. Nobody knows for sure,” this account reads. It goes on to describe

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