About this tour
Brackenridge Park looks today like a straightforward city park — the zoo, the golf course, the little train. But underneath the lawns is a 19th-century limestone quarry that made Texas cement, a Civil War tannery that shod Confederate soldiers, and a flood of springs that gave San Antonio its river in the first place. This drive threads through the park's industrial and civic history, from a whimsical faux-bois bridge to the oldest public golf course in Texas, and introduces the immigrant parks commissioner whose vision turned a quarry pit into the green space San Antonio still uses every day.