The Mission Trail: Texas's Only World Heritage Site

In 2015, UNESCO named the San Antonio Missions the only World Heritage Site in all of Texas — and it isn't one building, but a working string of four 18th-century Spanish frontier missions strung along the river south of downtown, each one still a functioning Catholic parish rather than a museum piece. This driving tour follows the Mission Trail from the oldest unrestored stone church in America down to a stone aqueduct that has carried water for nearly 300 years, stopping at the visitor center, two mission cemeteries, and every church along the way. Budget the better part of a morning or afternoon; the missions sit several miles apart along the river, so this is a drive, not a walk. Bring a sense of how a handful of Franciscan friars and the Indigenous families who joined them engineered an entire farming civilization onto the Texas frontier — and how much of it is still standing, and still working.