Mission San Francisco de la Espada Dam, Ditch and Aqueduct

Water was vital to the permanency of San Francisco de la Espada Mission, so Franciscan missionaries and their Indian followers built a dam, irrigation ditch, and aqueduct. The 270-foot dam, an engineering feat that "curved the wrong way," was built across the San Antonio River, and lime salts in the water gradually cemented its layers of brush, gravel, and rocks. Water carried by Espada ditch crossed Piedras Creek by way of the Espada aqueduct, the only such structure in the United States, built from 1740 to 1745. The alluvial valley produced maize, beans, melons, calabashes, and cotton, although deterioration had begun at Espada before its secularization in 1794. Even so, the dam, ditch, and aqueduct survived a century of Indian attacks, ravaging floods, and controversy before the Espada Ditch Company repaired the dam in 1895. In 1941, the San Antonio Conservation Society purchased the adjacent lands to help insure preservation of this singular colonial aqueduct, and in 1965 the United States Department of Interior designated Espada aqueduct a registered National Historic Landmark.

San Antonio, Texas · United States