San Antonio Missions National Historical Park, TX (2025)

In 2025, we successfully increased protection for historically significant land adjacent to the San Antonio Missions National Historical Park, transferring a key parcel to the National Park Service.

Overview

After working with us in 2021 to sell 44 acres of undeveloped land to expand San Antonio Missions National Historical Park, a property owner in Bexar County, Texas, recently donated an additional 0.3476 acres of land in San Antonio to us. The historically significant parcel is within San Antonio Missions National Historical Park (NHP), and next to property that the Park Trust transferred to the National Park Service (NPS) in 2021. Both parcels were acquired by NPS using the Land and Water Conservation Fund.

The property includes a portion of the east bank of the historic acequia (irrigation canal) that supported the cultivation of food crops for historic missions from the Spanish Colonial era. Four out of five Spanish Colonial Missions around San Antonio are protected by the San Antonio Missions NHP, the oldest of which dates from the early 1700s. The fifth mission, which is not in the Park, is the Alamo.

Why This Place Matters

UNESCO (the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization) named the Park and Alamo a World Heritage Site. San Antonio Missions qualified because the missions and grounds have an accurate cultural and historical landscape, “authentic” mission structures (that is, they had enough original construction and are using the same material for repairs as the missionaries did) and are formally protected by NPS and other governmental bodies.