What Actually Was the Alamo?

Many people are familiar with the battle cry of “Remember the Alamo!” The reference to the 1836 clash at the Texas landmark ended badly for its defenders but served as an inspiration for the inhabitants of a burgeoning republic.

Although casual students of history might recall some of the particulars of the battle, fewer likely realize that the Alamo existed for more than a century before this showdown or know of what became of the fortress in the aftermath.

Beyond the bravery shown by James Bowie, Davy Crockett and their brothers-in-arms against the superior forces of Mexican General Santa Anna, this centerpiece of San Antonio history began as a church, was used as a warehouse and general store and at one point, almost didn’t survive to become the world-famous museum and historic site it is today.

The Alamo began its life as Mission San Antonio de Valero on May 1, 1718. Established with the intent of developing a Spanish outpost on the San Antonio River and converting the local Indigenous population to Catholicism, it took three tries for the mission to take root in the area.

“The first location for the mission is close to the area that was San Pedro Springs Park, and where you have springs, you have fresh water,” explains Ernesto Rodriguez, the Alamo’s senior curator and historian. Water from the springs and rain forced the mission to move south of where the Alamo is now located. Yet that area came into the crosshairs of a destructive hurricane.

“It knocks down the little structure that they’ve built,” Rodriguez says, “so then they relocate the third time to its present location, which is at the highest point in downtown San Antonio.”

Construction of a two-story convento—which contained the friars’ sleeping quarters, offices, and dining rooms—commenced in 1724. A church began taking shape in the 1740s, but in 1756, some walls and arches for the not-yet-complete vaulted roof collapsed. Although its replacement was designed to feature twin bell towers and a barrel-vaulted roof, the limestone structure was left unfinished.

The three-acre grounds also included a granary, storerooms, carpentry shops and irrigation ditches known as acequias. Surrounding fields were used for farming and livestock grazing. Sometime after 1758, inhabitants began constructing an 8-foot-high protective outer wall with a gate on the south side.

After Mission San Antonio de Valero was secularized in 1793, the property was divided among its residents. However, the shifting tide of geopolitics that saw the nearby territory of Louisiana pass into the hands of France then the United States prompted Spain to organize a military garrison to defend its territory in the developing community of San Antonio de Béxar.

“The troops are sent from a town right at the Rio Grande called San Carlos de Alamo de Parras,” Rodriguez says. “The company…move[s] into the secularized mission, and from that moment on this place will be known as the Alamo.”

The Alamo Company converted the convento into what is now known as the Long Barrack, established the first hospital in San Antonio on the second floor of the building and built additional one-story “low” barracks just inside the newly fortified southern gate. Although the former mission saw no direct conflict during the Mexican War of Independence (1810-21), the Alamo served as a base for members of the revolutionary Gutiérrez-Magee expedition and later as a Spanish prison after the 1813 Battle of Medina.

The Alamo Company continued to occupy the fort until December 1835, when Mexican forces surrendered it to the insurgents of the Texas Revolution. Mexican forces then briefly reclaimed the territory following the Battle of the Alamo in late February and early March 1836. By the time the Republic of Texas won its independence the following month, the fort’s outer walls were mostly torn down.

The battle-scarred buildings of the Alamo remained largely untouched until 1846, when the United States’ annexation of Texas and the subsequent Mexican-American War led to the compound’s revival as an Army quartermaster depot. The walls of the Long Barrack were repaired and replastered, as windows, doorways and an exterior staircase were added to the building. The church, never completed during the mission era, was given its first roof as well as the now-iconic arched parapet above the front door.

Following the conclusion of the Mexican-American War, the Alamo quartermaster depot occupied a key spot in a supply chain that funneled goods to more remote outposts across western Texas. Although the depot was confiscated by the Confederacy in early 1861, it resumed its previous function at the close of the Civil War.

Meanwhile, the surrounding community was undergoing commercial development that was transforming San Antonio from a frontier town into a modern metropolis. This included the 1871 city purchase of Alamo property from the Catholic Archdiocese, a transaction that helped establish the current Alamo Plaza but also led to the razing of the low barracks. By 1877, when the U.S. Army moved on to a new depot at nearby Fort Sam Houston, the church and Long Barrack were all that remained of the 18th-century compound.

The vacant Long Barrack was sold to French-born businessman Honoré Grenet, who installed castle-like towers and crenellations atop his new general store, while leasing the church for use as a warehouse. Following his death in 1882, the store was acquired by the wholesale grocer Hugo & Schmeltzer.

The first step toward establishing the Alamo as a landmark came in 1883, when the state purchased the church and turned its care over to the city of San Antonio. The building became a visitors’ center, according to Rodriguez. Meanwhile, the rest of the complex remained privately owned.

Around two decades later, a group of investors proposed a radically different idea for the Alamo. They wanted to knock down Long Barrack and build a hotel—a plan that horrified Adina de Zavala, Clara Driscoll and other members of the Daughters of the Republic of Texas (DRT). As the investors circled a deal, the DRT successfully navigated a series of political and financial hurdles to turn the remains of the old fort into a full-fledged memorial.

In 1904, largely using her own savings, Clara purchased the Long Barrack from its private owner and deeded it to the state of Texas. After that, Rodriguez explains, “the state basically creates a law [that] sets up the Alamo as the ‘sacred memorial to the heroes that immolated themselves upon that hallowed ground.’” It has been a historic site and museum ever since.

Following a bumpy transition under competing factions of the DRT, the Alamo underwent several renovations that began with the removal of the Grenet-embellished roof and second floor from the Long Barrack. The church received a new concrete roof in the early 1920s, while commemoration of the Texas centennial led to the installation of the church’s flagstone floor and the Cenotaph monument in the Alamo Plaza.

Thanks in part to popular fare such as the 1955 Disney anthology episode “Davy Crockett at the Alamo” and the 1960 John Wayne movie The Alamo, the erstwhile fortress achieved a level of recognition that made it one of the best-known memorials in the nation. Designated as part of a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 2015, the Alamo continues to add new features to its grounds and unearth relics of its origins through archaeological digs, with the goal of ensuring that people will indeed remember the battlefield and other iterations of this colonial-era site in the centuries to come.