Get to know San Antonio

Fun Facts about the Alamo City

• San Antonio is the seventh largest city in the United States.
• Bexar (pronounced Bear) County is the county seat of San Antonio.
• San Antonio is one of the most haunted places in the United States.
• The San Fernando Cathedral is the oldest cathedral in the state of Texas. Founded in 1731.
• Did you know that the famous sports drink, Gatorade was invented by a San Antonian? That’s right, Dr. James Robert Cade who was a professor of medicine and nephrology at the University of Florida had been doing research about how football players had lost so much fluids and not enough to produce urine. That is when he invented the drink with electrolytes which became Gatorade.
• The Alamodome was purposefully built and opened on May 15, 1993 in hopes of attracting an NFL team.
• Famous NBA basketball player Shaquille O’ Neal had started his basketball career in San Antonio when he attended Cole High School. They won the state championship in 1989.
• The famous snack chip Fritos were invented in San Antonio by Charles E. Doolin in 1932. C.E. Doolin was inspired by a recipe he purchased from Gustavo Olguin, a Mexican-American restaurant owner in San Antonio. His mother Daisy Doolin invented the Frito Pie in 1930’s.
• Those cowboy boots in front of North Star Mall hold the Guinness World Record for the World’s Tallest Cowboy Boots sculpture that were constructed in 1980. Standing at a whopping 35-feet tall and weighing over 10,000 pounds, these boots aren’t made for walking. They were created by Austin-born Bob “Daddy O” Wade.
• BiblioTech library is coined as the nation’s first digital library which opened up to the public on September 14, 2013. Membership to this all-digital library is free to Bexar county residents.
• President Lyndon B. Johnson married Lady Bird Johnson at St. Mark’s Episcopal Church on November 17, 1934.
• The largest Mexican market outside of Mexico is the Historic Market Square downtown San Antonio. There are hundreds of small, locally owned shops inside that you can find pretty much almost anything there. There’s also a small food court. This place gets popping during Fiesta.
• It’s a dirty job but someone has to do it. When it’s Rodeo time, the same dirt that was purchased in Charlotte, TX, 45 minutes south of San Antonio in 1988 is used each and every year till this day. The dirt is stored in the back lot of the AT&T Center and is always cleaned and refined before it is reused again.
• July 2015 marks when the San Antonio Missions were marked as a UNESCO World Heritage Site, the only site in Texas.
• A first of its time. The 21-floor Milam building downtown San Antonio was the first tall building in the United States to have air conditioning. It opened January 1928 and the air conditioning design was done by Willis H. Carrier of Carrier Engineering Corporation which is now United Technologies Corporation in July 1979.
• San Pedro Springs Park is the oldest park in Texas according to the Texas State Historical Association. The park is also known to locals as San Pedro Park and is one of the oldest municipal parks in the United States. Its history goes back all the way till 1729. Oh yeah, and in 1910, the park was once home to the San Antonio Zoo before being moved to Brackenridge Park.
• San Antonio once had a working Sky Ride attraction at Brackenridge Park. It was constructed at a cost of $300,000 and took a few months to complete. On November 7th, the attraction opened as it took riders in a gondola over the Japanese Tea Gardens giving a bird’s eye view of downtown San Antonio. In 1999, the Sky Ride had its last run bringing 35 years to an end because it was dilapidated. It would have cost millions of dollars to restore the ride to its safe operational condition. The city declined the expenditure and said that it didn’t benefit the educational purposes of the zoo.
• Church’s Chicken had its first store that opened in San Antonio in 1952 by owner George W. Church. That location was right across the street from the Alamo.