River Walk: The Epic Story of San Antonio's River

How San Antonio's river was revived from a sluggish trickle to become a world-renowned model for river development is a story that is hardly known. For generations San Antonians have spun tales of rescue that rank with the most entertaining of Texas yarns. Outside writers swallowed them whole. This vividly illustrated book untangles the historical record. It reveals a story quite different from that of the well-worn tales. As their river began going dry more than a century ago, San Antonians refused to give up on the stream that had nourished them since Spanish times. They pumped in new water, fought floods, and turned the banks into a park. Years afterward they adopted a dramatic river design, then let it languish. They reembraced it decades later, just as a world s fair sparked the pedestrian traffic needed to make viable today s phenomenal River Walk, visited by some five million tourists each year. More than 200 illustrations, a great many of them never before published, make this book the premier portrayal of what has beeen ranked as the top travel destination in Texas.