On May 5, a presidio (military garrison) known as San Antonio de Bexar was established nearby. The site, on the west bank of the river, was a stop on the trail that crossed the wilderness of Texas between the missions of the Rio Grande and those of East Texas. The real founding of the city occurred in 1718 by Father Antonio Olivares, when he established the Mission of San Antonio de Valero. The county was named after San Antonio de Béjar, one of the 23 Mexican municipalities (administrative divisions) of Texas at the time of its independence.
San Antonio de Bexar, originally Villa de San Fernando de Bexar, was the first civil government established by the Spanish in the province of Texas. Specifically, the municipality was created in 1731 when 55 canaries settled near the system of missions that had been established around the source of the San Antonio River. The new settlement received its name from the Presidio San Antonio de Béjar, the Spanish military post that protected the missions. The prison, located in the fountains of San Pedro, was founded in 1718 and was named after Viceroy Balthasar Manuel de Zúñiga y Guzmán Sotomayor y Sarmiento, the second son of the Duke of Béjar (a city in Spain).
The modern city of San Antonio in the U.S. state of Texas also derives its name from San Antonio de Béjar. Peace and economic connections with the United States restored the city's prosperity, and by 1860, at the start of the Civil War, San Antonio had grown to become a city of 15,000 people. This culture survived during the periods of Mexico and the Republic of Texas and dominated social, economic, and political life in San Antonio until the period after the Texas Revolution.
Visitors can also enjoy cowboy culture every February at the San Antonio Stock Show %26 Rodeo; throughout the year, they can also see the 40-foot-tall cowboy boots at the North Star Mall. After the evacuation of Mexican forces, the Republic of Texas organized Bexar County in December 1836, and San Antonio was constituted as headquarters in January 1837.The name of San Antonio and the founding of the settlement occurred on two different days, 27 years apart. The Little Village neighborhood became an upper-class neighborhood in the early 1820s, and influential San Antonio residents continued to live in the community through the 1830s (Magruder 20). Like many municipalities in the southern United States, San Antonio has experienced constant population growth since the late 20th century.
During the Texas Revolution, San Antonio was the scene of several battles, including the siege of Bexar in December 1835 and the Battle of the Alamo on March 6, 1836, making it one of the most contested cities in North America. The Guenther flour mills, Gebhardt chili powder and Mahncke Park are local institutions that remember San Antonio's German heritage. From San Antonio, the Camino Real, the current Nacogdoches Highway, ran to the U.S. border in the small border town of Nacogdoches.
Get to know the sister cities of San Antonio, cities around the world destined to share economic, cultural and technological aspects with each other. Later, San Antonio served as a Confederate depot and several Confederate units were formed there. San Antonio used to be frequented by gunmen and thieves from the Old West and is particularly associated with Butch Cassidy, the members of the Wild Bunch's Sundance Kid, who often used Fannie Porter's brothel as a hiding place. Fray Antonio de Olivares, who had established the San Francisco Solano Mission, went only to a mission site proposed by Father Damián Manzanet in 1690.
