San Antonio

San Antonio is a city in south-central Texas, on the river of the same name at the southern edge of the Hill Country. Its five Spanish colonial missions were inscribed together as the San Antonio Missions, a UNESCO World Heritage Site, in 2015.

A Spanish expedition named the river in the late 17th century for Saint Anthony of Padua, on whose feast day it reached the spot. Martín de Alarcón founded the Presidio San Antonio de Béxar and Mission San Antonio de Valero, later known as the Alamo, in 1718. Canary Islanders who came in the 1730s formed the first civil government in Texas. A railroad reached the town in the 1870s, and San Antonio grew into a cattle-trading and army city with stone houses built by German immigrants south of downtown.

Robert Hugman, a local architect, proposed the River Walk in the late 1920s, and its walkways and stone bridges along a loop of the river were built a decade later by the Works Progress Administration. Each April, Fiesta San Antonio fills the city with parades on the river and in the streets, with food stands and music in the old plazas. The San Antonio Spurs won their NBA championships with Tim Duncan, Tony Parker and Manu Ginóbili under the coach Gregg Popovich. Carol Burnett, the comedian and television host, was born in San Antonio.

Toyota builds its Tundra pickup and Sequoia SUV at a plant on the city's south side. H-E-B, the Texas grocery company, has its head offices in restored 19th-century army buildings near downtown. iHeartMedia, which runs radio stations and the iHeartRadio app, is also based in San Antonio.