Mission San Francisco de la Espada Dam, Ditch and Aqueduct

Mission San Francisco de la Espada Dam, Ditch and Aqueduct. . , Since water was vital to the permanency of San Francisco de la Espada Mission, the Franciscan missionaries and their Indian followers built a dam, irrigation ditch, and aqueduct. The 270-foot dam, an engineering feat which "curved the wrong way", was built across the San Antonio River. Lime salts in the water gradually cemented the dam's layers of brush, gravel, and rocks. Water transported by Espada ditch crossed Piedras creek by way of the Espada aqueduct. This, the only such structure in the United States, was built from 1740 to 1745., The Alluvial Valley produced crops of maize, beans, melons, calabashes and cotton; however, deterioration had set in at Espada before its secularization in 1794. Even so the dam, ditch, and aqueduct survived a century of Indian attacks, ravaging floods, and controversy before the Espada Ditch Company repaired the dam in 1895., In 1941, to help insure the preservation of this singular colonial aqueduct, the San Antonio Conservation Society purchased the adjacent lands. Further assurance came in 1965, when the United States Department of Interior designated Espada aqueduct as a registered National Historic Landmark.