99 Fun Facts About San Antonio

San Antonio is the county seat of which Texas county?

Bexar County, said "bear", once sprawled across most of western Texas, and 128 other counties have since been carved out of it. The name comes from the Spanish fort San Antonio de Béxar.

In the 2020 census, which was the only Texas city with more residents than San Antonio?

Houston counted about 2.3 million people to San Antonio's 1.43 million. The surprise is who came next: Dallas, with 1.3 million inside its city limits, ranked behind San Antonio.

San Antonio was named in 1691 in honour of which saint?

Anthony of Padua got the honour by a quirk of the calendar: a Spanish expedition reached the river on June 13, his feast day, and named the spot for him.

Which rock star was banned from playing San Antonio for a decade after urinating at the Alamo in 1982?

Ozzy Osbourne was arrested, released within hours and still played his show that night. The city let him back in 1992, after he apologised and gave $10,000 to the group that looked after the shrine.

Which snack brand began in San Antonio in 1932, when sweet-shop manager Charles Doolin bought a corn chip recipe?

Fritos, from the Spanish for "fried", were first cooked at Doolin's home, where his mother helped perfect the recipe. The deal for the recipe also brought him the seller's existing customers.

The Alamo's name is the Spanish word for which kind of tree?

Cottonwood is "álamo" in Spanish. The old mission may owe the nickname to a grove beside it, or to the soldiers later housed there, whose company came from the Mexican town of Álamo de Parras.

Which frontiersman and former Tennessee congressman died defending the Alamo in 1836?

Davy Crockett came to Texas after voters threw him out of Congress in 1835. He is quoted telling them they "might go to hell, and I would go to Texas"; he was dead within months.

Settlers from which islands founded San Antonio's civil government in the 1730s, the first in Texas?

The Canary Islands supplied 56 settlers, who landed in Mexico and marched overland from the port of Veracruz. Some of San Antonio's oldest families still trace their descent from them.

Spain founded San Antonio in the early 1700s partly to keep which rival power out of Texas?

France held Louisiana next door, and its traders were already dealing with Texas tribes. So the viceroy approved San Antonio as a halfway post between the Rio Grande and Spain's missions in East Texas.

Which Texian colonel rallied 300 volunteers to storm San Antonio in December 1835 and died in the fighting?

Ben Milam spoke up as the army was about to give up the siege for the winter, asking who would go with "old Ben Milam" into the town. A sniper killed him two days before the Mexican surrender.

Which Tejano hero of San Jacinto, later mayor of San Antonio, gave his name to a city just east of it?

Juan Seguín resigned as mayor in 1842 amid threats on his life and fled to Mexico. The hero of Texas independence then found himself fighting for the other side in the Mexican–American War.

Which visiting reporter of the 1850s described San Antonio's "jumble of races, costumes, languages and buildings"?

Frederick Law Olmsted crossed Texas on horseback writing for a New York newspaper, years before he co-designed Central Park. He thought almost no American city could match San Antonio's "odd and antiquated foreignness".

Cattle drives from San Antonio to Kansas followed which trail?

Chisholm at first named only a stretch of the route north of Texas, and the label spread to the whole trail later. The drives died out in the mid-1880s, after railroads had reached San Antonio and Kansas had shut its border to Texas cattle.

Around 1880, roughly a third of San Antonio's residents were of which ethnic background?

German immigrants were so numerous that their language was heard on the streets about as often as English or Spanish. Their richest merchants built the mansions of the King William district.

At which San Antonio hotel did Theodore Roosevelt recruit Rough Riders in 1898?

The Menger Hotel grew out of a brewery: William Menger's beer drew so many visitors that in 1859 he and his wife opened a hotel beside it, a few steps from the Alamo. The regiment made its bar a favourite watering hole.

In 2017 UNESCO named San Antonio a Creative City for what?

Gastronomy won it for a cuisine fused over three centuries from the cooking of Spanish colonists and later settlers, the tradition behind Tex-Mex. Only Tucson, Arizona, had earned the title among US cities before.

What is San Antonio's primary source of drinking water?

The Edwards Aquifer is a honeycomb of water-filled limestone that shelters blind salamanders and catfish found nowhere else. San Antonio exists because of it: the city grew up around the big springs it feeds.

The Balcones Escarpment, which runs through San Antonio, marks the eastern edge of which Texas region?

The Hill Country begins at the escarpment, where ancient faults lifted a limestone plateau above the coastal plain. Seen from the flat side, the plateau's worn edge looks like a line of wooded hills.

Which Spurs center and Naval Academy graduate was nicknamed "The Admiral"?

David Robinson was the first pick of the 1987 draft, but the Spurs had to wait two years while he served out his Navy commitment. He was named Rookie of the Year when he finally arrived.

In which 1985 film does the hero travel to San Antonio to search the Alamo's basement for his stolen bicycle?

Pee-wee's Big Adventure ends the search with a tour guide's news that the Alamo has no basement. These days it has two, one of them under the gift shop, and Pee-wee actor Paul Reubens toured it in 2011.

Which insurer was founded in San Antonio in 1922 by Army officers who struggled to get cover for their cars?

USAA began when 25 officers met in a downtown hotel and agreed to insure one another, because insurers treated soldiers, who were always being posted somewhere new, as bad risks. Its members still own it.

Which grocery chain, founded in a small Texas town in 1905, has its headquarters in San Antonio?

H-E-B takes its initials from Howard Edward Butt, who took the business over from his mother, Florence. She had opened the first store on the ground floor of the family home in Kerrville.

Besides "Alamo City", which nickname does San Antonio use for itself?

Military City, USA has the bases to back it up: an Army post and two Air Force bases, since merged into one joint base. The city itself grew out of a Spanish fort and mission founded in 1718.

Every enlisted Air Force recruit goes through basic training at which San Antonio base?

Lackland took on a second service in 2020, when the first enlisted members of the new Space Force went through boot camp there alongside the Air Force's recruits.

An Army post in San Antonio hosts the world's largest centre for what kind of training?

Military medical education for three services shares one campus there. A 2005 base-closure plan ordered the Navy and Air Force to move their medics' schools to San Antonio and train beside the Army's.

Which future NBA giant led San Antonio's Cole High School to an unbeaten season and a state title in 1989?

Shaquille O'Neal was an Army sergeant's stepson, and Cole is the school for families posted to the Army's base in the city. His senior-year team went 36–0.

Which comedy star, born in San Antonio in 1933, fronted a CBS variety show under her own name for 11 seasons?

Carol Burnett lived in San Antonio with her grandmother until she was seven. The ear tug that closed every episode of her show began as a secret hello to her.

Which San Antonio theme park, opened in 2010, was designed so that guests with disabilities could enjoy every ride?

Morgan's Wonderland was built by Gordon Hartman after he watched other children walk away from his daughter Morgan at a hotel pool. Guests with disabilities get in free.

Which San Antonio institution was the first devoted to modern art in Texas?

The McNay Art Museum began as a home: oil heiress and painter Marion Koogler McNay left the city her 24-room mansion, her collection and most of her fortune to turn it into a museum.

A giant pair of what stands outside San Antonio's North Star Mall?

Cowboy boots, and they were not made for Texas at all: artist Bob "Daddy-O" Wade built them in 1979 for a site near the White House. When that show ended, they were taken apart and hauled to the mall.

Which San Antonio celebration began as an 1891 parade whose riders pelted one another with flowers?

Fiesta San Antonio grew from that "Battle of Flowers", staged as a salute to the heroes of the Alamo and San Jacinto. The parade is still run entirely by women.

Which coach led the Spurs to five NBA titles between 1999 and 2014?

Gregg Popovich gave himself the job: he was the Spurs' general manager when he fired coach Bob Hill early in the 1996–97 season and took over on the bench. He stayed for nearly three decades.

The arena the Spurs have played in since 2002 took which new name in 2023?

Frost Bank Center replaced the name of AT&T, the phone giant that had moved its headquarters from San Antonio to Dallas and later gave up the sponsorship. Frost is a San Antonio bank.

San Antonio built the Alamodome in hopes of attracting what?

An NFL team never came to stay. The closest the dome got was 2005, when the New Orleans Saints, flooded out by Hurricane Katrina, played three home games there.

Which burger chain, founded in Corpus Christi in 1950, later moved its headquarters to San Antonio?

Whataburger is named for what founder Harmon Dobson hoped customers would say. He was a keen pilot, and he striped his restaurants orange and white, the colours of airport buildings, so he could spot them from the air.

As of the 2025 season, the Double-A San Antonio Missions were an affiliate of which California MLB club?

The San Diego Padres took the Missions back in 2021. San Antonio had stepped up a level in 2019 as the Brewers' Triple-A club, only for a shake-up of the minor leagues to drop it down again two seasons later.

Which future president arrived in San Antonio in 1915 as a newly commissioned Army lieutenant?

Dwight D. Eisenhower met Mamie Doud during that first posting, and they married on the day he was promoted. He was serving at the same Army post again when Pearl Harbor was attacked.

The San Antonio Stars WNBA team relocated in 2017 to become which franchise?

The Las Vegas Aces were born when casino company MGM Resorts bought the Stars from the Spurs' owners. The team never won a title in San Antonio; in Nevada it won three in four seasons from 2022.

Which PGA Tour event has been held in San Antonio since 1922?

The Valero Texas Open produced the worst par-four score in the PGA Tour's records in 2011: Kevin Na needed 16 shots, most of them spent hacking his way out of the trees.

Which San Antonio mayor of the 1980s went on to serve as Bill Clinton's housing secretary?

Henry Cisneros turned out to be the first of a pair. A later San Antonio mayor, Julián Castro, left City Hall in 2014 for exactly the same cabinet post, this time under Barack Obama.

What is the nickname of the University of Texas at San Antonio's teams?

Roadrunners was the students' choice in 1977, but only at the second attempt: an earlier ballot, narrowed to an armadillo and a star, was thrown out for breaking election rules. The bird then beat the armadillo.

Which Mexican university has a campus in San Antonio?

UNAM first taught outside Mexico in San Antonio, in 1944. The visit became permanent when the city gave the school a home on the old World's Fair grounds.

Which city opened light rail in 2008, leaving San Antonio as the largest US city without rail transit?

Phoenix opened its first light rail line just after Christmas 2008. San Antonio's own hopes of a commuter line to Austin, called Lone Star Rail, were abandoned in 2016 after 19 years of planning.

Which Amtrak route runs daily between Chicago and San Antonio?

The Texas Eagle goes further three days a week: in San Antonio its through cars are coupled to the Sunset Limited and roll on to Los Angeles, the longest passenger train route in the country.

Which industrial city in northern Mexico became San Antonio's first sister city in 1953?

Monterrey and San Antonio paired up three years before the White House launched the national sister-city programme.

Which landmark was built for HemisFair '68?

Tower of the Americas got its top the hard way: the crown, with its restaurant and observation decks, was built on the ground and inched up the concrete shaft on 24 steel rods.

Which Spurs great, the first pick of the 1997 draft, grew up in the US Virgin Islands training as a swimmer?

Tim Duncan switched sports as a teenager, after Hurricane Hugo wrecked the pool his swim team used. Practice moved to the open sea, and his fear of sharks kept him out of the water.

Which Mexican president personally led the army that stormed the Alamo in March 1836?

Santa Anna's triumph lasted six weeks. Texan troops then routed his army in a surprise attack, captured him the next day and had him sign an agreement to pull his soldiers out of Texas.

HemisFair's dragon mascot, Luther, became the title character of which 1969 Krofft children's show?

H.R. Pufnstuf grew out of the puppet show the Krofft brothers staged at the fair's Coca-Cola pavilion. When NBC asked them for a Saturday-morning series, they reused its plot and gave its dragon a new name.

Which rock singer was banned from San Antonio stages for a decade after urinating on the Alamo Cenotaph in 1982?

Ozzy Osbourne was wearing his future wife's dress that day because she had hidden his clothes. He later apologized and donated $10,000 to the Daughters of the Republic of Texas.

Which 1985 comedy sends its hero to San Antonio after a stolen bike supposedly hidden in the Alamo's basement?

Pee-wee's Big Adventure sends its hero on a guided tour before he learns the Alamo has no basement at all. The film was Tim Burton's first feature as a director.

Which British rock drummer donated his huge private collection of Alamo artifacts to the San Antonio shrine in 2014?

Phil Collins had gathered hundreds of items tied to the 1836 battle and written a book about them. He announced the gift at a press conference held at the Alamo itself.

Which San Antonio Spurs legend took up basketball at 14 after Hurricane Hugo destroyed the pool he swam in?

Tim Duncan hoped to become an Olympic swimmer like his sister Tricia. With the pool gone he had to train in the ocean, where his fear of sharks ruined his enthusiasm for the sport.

Which corn chip brand began in San Antonio in 1932, when Charles Doolin bought the recipe for just $100?

Fritos started with a newspaper ad. Gustavo Olguin, a soccer coach from Oaxaca who wanted to return to Mexico, offered his recipe, his custom potato ricer and his 19 retail accounts for sale.

Bracken Cave, just outside San Antonio, is the summer home of the world's largest colony of which animal?

Bats at Bracken Cave, about 20 million Mexican free-tails, form the largest known gathering of mammals on Earth. Together they eat several tons of insects every night.

Which future president recruited cavalry volunteers in the bar of San Antonio's Menger Hotel in 1898?

Theodore Roosevelt drank at the Menger Bar while signing up his Rough Riders for the war with Spain. The hotel had opened in 1859 on what is now Alamo Plaza.

Which future NBA giant led Cole High School in San Antonio to a 68–1 record and a Texas state title?

Shaquille O'Neal grew up an Army kid: his stepfather was a career sergeant, and the family reached Texas after a posting in Europe. He won the state championship in his senior year.

Which former Tennessee congressman and famed frontiersman died defending the Alamo in San Antonio in 1836?

Davy Crockett reached Texas only in January 1836, weeks before the siege began. He had left home after losing his seat in Congress in the election of August 1835.

Which annual event takes over the San Antonio Spurs' arena each February, sending the team on a long road trip?

A rodeo, the San Antonio Stock Show & Rodeo, has pushed the Spurs out for much of every February since 2003. Fans and players know the stretch as the Rodeo Road Trip.

Which Mexican general and president personally led the army that stormed the Alamo in San Antonio in March 1836?

Santa Anna was captured weeks later, the day after the Battle of San Jacinto. He had hastily put on a dead dragoon's uniform but was quickly recognized.

Which Alamo defender, namesake of a famous fighting knife, spent the San Antonio siege bedridden with illness?

Jim Bowie had commanded the Alamo's volunteers until he fell ill. In 1831 he had married Ursula de Veramendi at San Fernando, now the city's cathedral.

Which comedy legend, born in San Antonio in 1933, starred in her own CBS variety show from 1967 to 1978?

Carol Burnett was born at Nix Hospital downtown, the daughter of a movie theater manager and a studio publicity writer. The family later moved to Hollywood.

Which fried chicken chain opened its first stand in 1952 across the street from the Alamo in San Antonio?

Church's began as a to-go stand run by George W. Church, a retired chicken incubator salesman. Two pieces of chicken and a roll cost 49 cents.

Which San Antonio Spurs center was nicknamed the Admiral after playing college basketball at the US Naval Academy?

David Robinson never came close to admiral: his highest rank was lieutenant, junior grade. Drafted in 1987, he served two years in the Navy before playing his first NBA game.

Cascarones, cracked over friends' heads during San Antonio's big April festival, are hollow eggshells filled with what?

Confetti eggs are mostly a Carnival custom in Mexico. Along the border the two cultures blended and made them a popular Easter tradition as well.

Whose last official act as president was dedicating an aerospace medical school at San Antonio's Brooks Air Force Base?

John F. Kennedy spoke at Brooks on November 21, 1963. He was assassinated in Dallas the following day.

Which marine theme park chain opened its largest park in San Antonio in 1988, drawing 75,000 people to the opening?

SeaWorld was then owned by a book publisher, Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, which spent $170 million on the Texas park. Deep in debt, it sold its theme parks to Anheuser-Busch a year later.

Which Texas burger chain, known for orange-and-white striped roofs, moved its headquarters to San Antonio in 2009?

Whataburger left Corpus Christi, where Harmon Dobson and Paul Burton had opened the first restaurant in 1950. The Dobson family went on owning the chain until 2019.

Which Native American leader was held with his captured warriors in the Quadrangle of San Antonio's Fort Sam Houston?

Geronimo is tied to a legend that the deer in the Quadrangle were brought in because he refused food he had not hunted. The herd was in fact there before him.

Which Air Force Academy graduate became the winningest head coach in NBA history while leading the San Antonio Spurs?

Gregg Popovich earned a degree in Soviet studies at the academy and went through Air Force intelligence training. He briefly considered a career with the Central Intelligence Agency.

San Antonio Spurs star Manu Ginóbili led which country to the Olympic basketball gold medal in 2004?

Argentina's win made Ginóbili one of only two players, alongside Bill Bradley, to own a EuroLeague title, an NBA championship and an Olympic gold medal.

Which French teenager did the San Antonio Spurs select with the first overall pick of the 2023 NBA draft?

Victor Wembanyama was the first French player ever drafted first overall. He went on to lead the league in blocks and was the unanimous Rookie of the Year.

Which 2000 pageant comedy starring Sandra Bullock shot scenes at the Alamo and elsewhere in San Antonio?

Miss Congeniality cast Bullock, who also produced it, as FBI agent Gracie Hart, sent undercover as a contestant after a bomb threat. The role earned her a Golden Globe nomination.

Which interstate highway runs north from Laredo through San Antonio and Austin on its way toward Dallas?

I-35 between San Antonio and Austin is considered one of the most congested stretches in the whole Interstate System. The road keeps going all the way to Duluth, Minnesota.

Which 1927 silent war film, shot at Kelly Field in San Antonio, won the first Academy Award for Best Picture?

Wings was directed by William Wellman, hired as the only Hollywood director who had flown in combat in World War I. No other fully silent film has won the top prize.

The Alamo in San Antonio most likely takes its name from the Spanish word for which kind of tree?

Cottonwood trees grew nearby, but the name probably arrived with a cavalry company posted at the old mission in the early 1800s. Its home town in Coahuila was Álamo de Parras.

Which dish gave the 'queens' of San Antonio's open-air plaza food stalls their famous nickname?

Chili con carne went national after a San Antonio stand at the 1893 Columbian Exposition in Chicago gave many Americans their first taste. Texas named it the official state dish in 1977.

San Antonio's Six Flags theme park opened in 1992 on a site that had spent decades as what?

A limestone quarry called Redland had worked the site since 1934. When the stone in that section ran out in 1988 the land was freed up, and much of the park now sits hidden inside the pit.

During World War II, San Antonio renamed its Japanese Tea Garden after which other country?

China replaced Japan in the name to shield the garden from wartime vandalism, and the Japanese-American family that tended it was evicted in 1942. The original name returned in 1984.

Which San Antonio Spurs guard, nicknamed the Iceman, won his first NBA scoring title by seven-hundredths of a point?

George Gervin scored 63 points in the last game of the 1977–78 season to hold off a rival who had just put up 73. The nickname came from his cool demeanor on court.

The San Antonio Spurs won their first NBA championship in 1999 by beating which eighth-seeded team in the Finals?

The New York Knicks were the first eighth seed ever to reach the Finals. The Spurs clinched on the road at Madison Square Garden and became the first former ABA team to win the title.

Before moving to San Antonio in 1973 and becoming the Spurs, the franchise played in the ABA as which Dallas team?

The Chaparrals found no credible buyer, so their owners leased the team to 35 San Antonio businessmen led by Angelo Drossos and Red McCombs, who moved it south and renamed it.

Which Delta blues legend made his first recordings in Room 414 of San Antonio's Gunter Hotel in 1936?

Robert Johnson cut future standards such as Sweet Home Chicago and Cross Road Blues at the Gunter over three days. His only other session came in Dallas the following year.

Which famed aviator graduated first in his Army flight class at San Antonio's Kelly Field in 1925?

Charles Lindbergh was one of just 18 cadets left from a class of 104 when the year-long course ended. He had drifted into San Antonio after months of barnstorming across the South.

Which San Antonio specialty is Henry, the baseball Missions' mascot chased around the bases by a child each game?

A puffy taco starts as raw masa dropped into hot oil until it balloons, a style popularized by Henry Lopez's San Antonio restaurant. The ballpark chase has run since 1989.

Which former San Antonio brewery, closed in 2001, became home to a campus of the Culinary Institute of America?

Pearl beer outlived its own brewery, with production shifted to a Miller plant in Fort Worth. The San Antonio complex, the company's home since 1883, was redeveloped instead of torn down.

Which lieutenant colonel led the Alamo's regular soldiers in San Antonio and wrote a famous plea for reinforcements?

William B. Travis wrote the plea on February 24, 1836, early in the siege, addressing it to the people of Texas and all Americans in the world. It is known as the Victory or Death letter.

Which of San Antonio's colonial missions is famed for its ornately carved Rose Window, sculpted in 1775?

San José's window comes with a folk tale: a craftsman named Pedro Huizar is said to have carved it for his sweetheart Rosa, lost at sea on her way from Spain. Its real sculptor is unknown.

Which San Antonio mayor became, in 2012, the first Hispanic keynote speaker at a Democratic National Convention?

Julián Castro first won a council seat at 26, at the time the youngest councilman in San Antonio history. His identical twin Joaquin, born a minute after him, became a congressman.

Salesman John Gates penned charging cattle in a downtown San Antonio plaza to prove the strength of which new product?

Barbed wire fences held when the cattle charged them. The showman behind the stunt became a Gilded Age industrialist and gambler known as Bet-a-Million Gates.

The 1840 Council House Fight in San Antonio erupted during a peace conference with chiefs of which nation?

Comanche delegates were to be seized as hostages unless they handed over all their captives, on orders from the Texas secretary of war. Buffalo Hump answered the killings with the Great Raid of 1840.

The San Antonio Texans played their only season, 1995, at the Alamodome as members of which league?

The CFL could play there because the Alamodome's floor was large enough for a regulation Canadian field. The team had relocated from Sacramento, where it was the Gold Miners.

In 1938 Emma Tenayuca led about 12,000 San Antonio workers out on strike in which industry?

Pecan shelling produced the largest strike in the city's history. Once the industry was held to the minimum wage it turned to machines, and about 10,000 shellers had lost their jobs by 1941.

Which San Antonio air base, home to a headquarters nicknamed the Taj Mahal, was dubbed the West Point of the Air?

Randolph earned the title because nearly every new Air Corps officer passed through its pilot training. The Taj is its headquarters building, crowned by a large water tower.

Which Mexican revolutionary wrote his call to overthrow Porfirio Díaz while in exile in San Antonio in 1910?

Francisco Madero had escaped from jail and fled north after a rigged election. He backdated his Plan of San Luis Potosí and set it in the last place in Mexico he had been.

After a deadly 1921 flood swamped San Antonio, the city built which dam to hold back future floods?

Olmos Dam was begun in 1925 and finished the next year. A cut-off channel followed in 1929 so that excess water could bypass the Great Bend of the river downtown.

Which adobe landmark in downtown San Antonio is the last visible trace of the city's 18th-century colonial presidio?

The Spanish Governor's Palace was planned as early as 1722 and finished in 1749. It is the only aristocratic Spanish Colonial town house of its century left in Texas.

The San Antonio River ends about ten miles short of San Antonio Bay by flowing into which other Texas river?

The Guadalupe takes in the San Antonio River at the end of a 240-mile run. That journey starts at a cluster of springs about four miles north of downtown.

Parents from which poor San Antonio school district brought the 1973 Supreme Court case over unequal school funding?

Edgewood parents won in the lower courts, but the Supreme Court ruled that school financing built on local property taxes did not violate the Equal Protection Clause.