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1718 the Spaniards established the mission of San António de Valero and the presidio (a fortified community) of San António de Béjar on opposite banks of the upper San Antonio River. The mission of San José y San Miguel de Aguayo, now often referred to as Mission San José, was established nearby in 1720
By 1731 three other missions were operating in the river valley south of Mission San José. In that same year a group from the Canary Islands arrived, persuaded by the Spanish to move to the frontier, and established a community named Villa de San Fernando. Later this community was consolidated with the presidio and with the small settlement that had developed around the earliest mission to form the community of San Antonio.
During much of the 18th century, the San Antonio area was dominated by Mission San José, which flourished as one of the most prosperous and influential missions in Texas. Then, in 1793, nearly all the missions in Texas were secularized and most of the mission buildings in the San Antonio area were abandoned.
However, the community of San Antonio remained the principal settlement in Texas during the years that Texas was under Spanish, and then Mexican, rule.
San Antonio was incorporated as a city in 1809. In 1813 during the Mexican War for Independence the city was briefly freed from Spanish rule, but was quickly reconquered by Royalist forces. It remained a center of Spanish Texas until Mexican independence in 1821, and then was the center for Mexican Texas. During the Texas Revolution, Texas troops captured the town in December 1835, but General Antonio López de Santa Anna recaptured the city with the fall of the Alamo on March 6, 1836. Reclaimed with the end of the revolution in April, San Antonio was chartered in 1837 as the seat of Bexar County.
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After Texas entered the Union in 1845, the city enjoyed rapid growth as the servicing and distribution center for the western movement of settlers. In 1860 its population was the largest in Texas, with German immigrants outnumbering both the Anglo and Hispanic populations. The city served as a Confederate depot during the American Civil War (1861-1865). But lacking a port or complex transportation network, the city's economic importance was limited until the coming of the Galveston, Harrisburg, and San Antonio Railroad in 1877. Thereafter it emerged quickly as the shipping and manufacturing center of southern and western Texas.
Until 1910 most of the new immigrants to the area were Anglos from southern states, and the city grew to about 70,000 inhabitants.
The pattern changed with the turmoil of the Mexican Revolution (1910-1920), which initiated an influx of new settlers from Mexico into the Río Grande Valley. The ambiance of the city began to change from one of a Spanish setting to one of Texas-Mexican culture. San Antonio prospered during the world wars of the first half of the 20th century through the concentration of major military bases in the area. |
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Renewal projects were expanded in the 1960s, as Hispanics began the domination of San Antonio politics and as tourism became the most important segment of the area's economic well-being. Two important events in this ongoing process were the receiving of federal funds for HemisFair, a world's fair that highlighted San Antonio and its downtown area and culture, and the election in 1981 of Henry Cisneros, the first Hispanic mayor of a major American city. These events demonstrated the importance of cleaning up and rebuilding the downtown and signified the political accommodation of Anglo and Hispanic politicians.
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