Mission San Francisco de la Espada

Mission San Francisco de la Espada was established along the San Antonio river on March 5, 1731. After being moved from east Texas, where Spain founded Mission San Franciso de los Tejas in 1690. Floods, fevers, fires and limited supplies were causes for relocation of the mission. The missions purpose was to convert the American Indians into Spanish European citizens. For more than sixty years Mission Espada was a place of learning. The Spaniards taught the catholic faith and Spanish language and traditions. The mission Indians learned vital skills needed for growing crops, raising livestock, sheep, goats, and pigs. Also they learned trades such as iron work, producing textiles, brick making, and building with masonry. By the mid 1700's the mission had an essence of a dynamic community everyone in the mission was working and the crops were flourishing. Mission Espada as well as the other missions were built near the banks of the San Antonio river. In order for the mission to be successful they need to plant and harvest crops. South Texas doesn't get much rain so irrigation was desperately needed. To solve the irrigation problem the constructed a gravity flow ditch system known as Acequias. This fifteen mile network irrigated about 3,500 acres of land. It used water levels to disperse different amounts of water to different places. Controlled be floodgates, water could be sent to Fields for irrigation, and for uses such as bathing, washing, and powering a mill wheel. many farms today still use this system.