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The engineering behind the San Antonio River Walk

practical.engineering

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Re: The engineering behind the San Antonio River Walk

#11

Post by TechPlasma »

Grew in San Antonio as well and one of the best parts about the Riverwalk is that it offers a fantastic pedestrian corridor across almost the entirety of downtown San Antonio and connects a lot of really interesting places, The missions down south, Pearl Brewery and it's shopping district, downtown mall and Convention center as well as La Villita and The Art Museum.

Sure you can walk the streets but getting around via the Riverwalk is actually extremely pleasant. I really love how convinient of a convention city San Antonio is.

Re: The engineering behind the San Antonio River Walk

#13

Post by superq »

closewith wrote: post #7
db48x wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It’s a pleasant spot. Texas is dry and hot as a rule, but the river walk is a level below the city, right at the water’s edge, with trees providing ample shade for the whole length. If you are visiting San Antonio you will definitely want to eat lunch there so that you can be in the shade during the hottest part of the day. But is it special enough to make it worth a trip to San Antonio just to see the it? No, probab…

> remember all who died for your freedom there The Mexicans or the Texans?

No Mexicans died for anyone's freedom, including their own or other Mexicans. They were serving under a dictator and didn't have a choice. (And, yes, there were some slaves in Texas, but comparatively few compared to the rest of the South.)

The small force there knew they would eventually be massacred by the thousands of troops surrounding them. The defenders held them off for 13 days. When they requested parley, Santa Anna signaled no quarter. Legend has it that Davy Crockett was on the roof, fighting to keep the horde from coming up the ladder, but he died with the rest of them.

Santa Anna ordered the execution of the six surviving prisoners of war. The Alamo defenders fought bravely and died in support of an idea: that men can govern themselves and live in freedom. It would take another 30 years before the first Republican President, Abraham Lincoln, would sign the Emancipation Proclamation and free the slaves.

Re: The engineering behind the San Antonio River Walk

#15

Post by superq »

esalman wrote: post #12
dgfitz wrote: post #3

The engineering is fascinating. The river walk itself is hardly worth the trip.

It's pretty much the only thing to see South of Austin. Except for Big Bend but that's further West.

Starbase, too and the hill country towns. And also way out west, Marfa.

Re: The engineering behind the San Antonio River Walk

#16

Post by AlotOfReading »

superq wrote: post #13
closewith wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> remember all who died for your freedom there The Mexicans or the Texans?

No Mexicans died for anyone's freedom, including their own or other Mexicans. They were serving under a dictator and didn't have a choice. (And, yes, there were some slaves in Texas, but comparatively few compared to the rest of the South.) The small force there knew they would eventually be massacred by the thousands of troops surrounding them. The defenders held them off for 13 days. When they requested parley, San…

This is pretty revisionist. Slavery wasn't some ancillary factor that just happened to exist in Texas. It was core to the anglo side of the Texas revolution. The War Party was strongly proslavery and the increasing (Mexican) federal push towards abolition was a key point for them. They especially hated a Mexican predecessor to the Emancipation Proclamation called the Guerrero decree that (attempted to) free most slaves in the northern states. After independence, they wrote slavery into the constitution and some of the first laws passed prohibited slaveowners from freeing slaves without government approval. The events in Texas were just one of half a dozen revolutions opposed to Mexican federal centralization around the same time.

None of this was politically palatable after the American Civil War and people certainly weren't going to focus on the non-anglo sides of the revolution that weren't so deeply proslavery, so the narrative that's taught in schools was sanitized.

Re: The engineering behind the San Antonio River Walk

#17

Post by mythrwy »

The first time I visited San Antonio I'd never heard of the river walk.

We were simply walking along the street downtown and saw some stairs leading down and many people taking them so we went down and a whole magical world opened up. (I went back later and it wasn't nearly as magical).

Re: The engineering behind the San Antonio River Walk

#18

Post by stevenwoo »

AlotOfReading wrote: post #16
superq wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No Mexicans died for anyone's freedom, including their own or other Mexicans. They were serving under a dictator and didn't have a choice. (And, yes, there were some slaves in Texas, but comparatively few compared to the rest of the South.) The small force there knew they would eventually be massacred by the thousands of troops surrounding them. The defenders held them off for 13 days. When they requested parley, San…

This is pretty revisionist. Slavery wasn't some ancillary factor that just happened to exist in Texas. It was core to the anglo side of the Texas revolution. The War Party was strongly proslavery and the increasing (Mexican) federal push towards abolition was a key point for them. They especially hated a Mexican predecessor to the Emancipation Proclamation called the Guerrero decree that (attempted to) free most slav…

As someone who went to public school in Texas, the textbooks in Texas are vetted by revisionists who still claim the Civil War was about states rights and not slavery, my civic teacher argued this repeatedly in the 1980s. A lot of kids are indoctrinated with the BS that downplay the slavery aspect, it's like the Big Lie of the south.

Re: The engineering behind the San Antonio River Walk

#19

Post by stevenwoo »

esalman wrote: post #12
dgfitz wrote: post #3

The engineering is fascinating. The river walk itself is hardly worth the trip.

It's pretty much the only thing to see South of Austin. Except for Big Bend but that's further West.

There are a lot of cool museums if one happens to be in Houston IMHO. Also I dunno if they have the gigantic exhibits from the 1960s and 1970s still, but as a kid the Johnson Space Center impressed me.

Re: The engineering behind the San Antonio River Walk

#20

Post by scarecrowbob »

stevenwoo wrote: post #18
AlotOfReading wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is pretty revisionist. Slavery wasn't some ancillary factor that just happened to exist in Texas. It was core to the anglo side of the Texas revolution. The War Party was strongly proslavery and the increasing (Mexican) federal push towards abolition was a key point for them. They especially hated a Mexican predecessor to the Emancipation Proclamation called the Guerrero decree that (attempted to) free most slav…

As someone who went to public school in Texas, the textbooks in Texas are vetted by revisionists who still claim the Civil War was about states rights and not slavery, my civic teacher argued this repeatedly in the 1980s. A lot of kids are indoctrinated with the BS that downplay the slavery aspect, it's like the Big Lie of the south.

One of the nice things about growing up in Texas is that I 100% know what being the target of state-sponsored propaganda feels like. The extra cool thing is that almost all the propaganda is pretty easy to refute and it is easy to access alternative (and IME more historically correct points of views) which aren't supressed by the state.

That makes it a lot easier to understand the claim that folks often make, that any system is "propaganda free" when disagreements can be publicly stated with no governmental reprisal, is trivially false.

At the same time, it's been pleasantly horrific to look at how objectively bad the reflexive assumptions most of my cohort hold about the world and then try to draw conclusions about how terrible and mistaken my own views have and probably continue to be.

Thanks, Texas!

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