'''SAN ANTONIO'''

(Interwiki: IPAc-en » icon|ˌ|s|æ|n|æ|n|ˈ|t|oʊ|n|i|.|oʊ) is the seventh-largest city proper in the United States of America and the second-largest within the state of Texas, with a population of 1.33 million. Located in the American Southwest and the south–central part of Texas, the city serves as the seat of Bexar County. In 2011, it was estimated to be the 24th largest metropolitan area in the U.S. with a population of 2.2 million according to U.S. Census Bureau figures tabulated by Business First. San Antonio has characteristics of other western urban centers in which there are sparsely populated areas and a low density rate outside of the city. It was the fourth-fastest growing large city in the nation from 2000 to 2006 and the fifth-fastest-growing from 2007 to 2008. The San Antonio/New Braunfels metropolitan area, officially Greater San Antonio, has a population of over 2.14 million based on the 2010 U.S. Census, making it the 25th-largest metropolitan area in the nation and third-largest in the state of Texas.
The city was named for San Antonio de Padua, whose feast day is on June 13, when a Spanish expedition stopped in the area in 1691. Famous for Spanish missions, the Alamo, the River Walk, the Tower of the Americas, the Alamo Bowl, Marriage Island and host to SeaWorld and Six Flags Fiesta Texas theme parks, the city is visited by approximately 26 million tourists per year according to the San Antonio Convention and Visitors Bureau. The city is home to the four-time NBA champion San Antonio Spurs and the annual San Antonio Stock Show & Rodeo, one of the largest in the country.
San Antonio has a strong military presence—it is home to Fort Sam Houston, Lackland Air Force Base, Randolph Air Force Base, and Brooks City-Base, with Camp Bullis and Camp Stanley outside the city. Kelly Air Force Base operated out of San Antonio until 2001, when the airfield was transferred over to Lackland AFB and the remaining portions of the base became Port San Antonio, an industrial/business park. San Antonio is home to five Fortune 500 companies and the South Texas Medical Center, the only medical research and care provider in the South Texas region.

HISTORY

Interwiki: Main » History of San Antonio
Category: File - :San Antonio, Texas in 1886.jpg|left|thumb|Lithograph of San Antonio in 1886.
Native Americans originally lived near the San Antonio River Valley, in the San Pedro Springs area, calling the vicinity "Yanaguana," meaning "refreshing waters." In 1691, a group of Spanish explorers and missionaries came upon the river and Native American settlement on June 13, the feast day of St. Anthony of Padua, and named the place and river "San Antonio" in his honor.
Early Spanish settlement of San Antonio began with the Martin de Alarcon expedition and the establishment of the San Antonio de Valero Mission (now the Alamo) as a means to reassert Spanish dominance over Texas from the nearby French in Louisiana. The viceroy, at the instigation of Father Antonio de San Buenaventura y Olivares, made the suppression of illicit trade from Louisiana a primary objective. He also pledged support for the Franciscan missions in Texas. Father Olivares had earlier made a visit to a site on the San Antonio River in 1709, and from that time forward he was determined to found a mission and civilian settlement there. The viceroy gave formal approval for a halfway mission and presidio in late 1716, and assigned responsibility for their establishment to Martin de Alarcón, the governor of Coahuila and Texas. A series of delays, however, occasioned in part by differences between Alarcón and Olivares, postponed definitive action until 1718. The families clustered around the presidio and mission formed the beginnings of Villa de Béjar, destined to become the most important town in Spanish Texas. On May 1, on the San Antonio River, the governor founded Mission San Antonio de Valero (later famous as the Alamo), and on May 5 established Presidio San Antonio de Béjar. Presidio defending walls or breastworks would never be completed or necessary, as the mission itself would later become the principal unit of walled defense. San Antonio de Béjar Presidio, the center of Spanish defense in western Texas, was founded by Martín de Alarcón on May 5, 1718, on the west side of the San Antonio River one-fourth league from the San Antonio de Valero Mission.
On February 14, 1719, the Marquis of San Miguel de Aguayo made a report to the king of Spain proposing that 400 families be transported from the Canary Islands, Galicia, or Havana to populate the province of Texas. His plan was approved, and notice was given the Canary Islanders (isleños) to furnish 200 families; the Council of the Indies suggested that 400 families should be sent from the Canaries to Texas by way of Havana and Veracruz. By June 1730, twenty-five families had reached Cuba and ten families had been sent on to Veracruz before orders from Spain to stop the movement arrived. Under the leadership of Juan Leal Goraz, the group marched overland to the presidio of San Antonio de Béjar (then spelled as "Bexar," an Anglicized form. The Spanish letter "jota", as written old-style, was mistaken by Americans for the English letter "x"), where they arrived on March 9, 1731. The party had increased by marriages on the way to fifteen families, a total of fifty-six persons. They joined a military community that had been in existence since 1718. The immigrants formed the nucleus of the villa of San Fernando de Béjar, the first regularly organized civil government in Texas. Several of the old families of San Antonio trace their descent from the Canary Island colonists. María Rosa Padrón was the first baby born of Canary Islander descent in San Antonio.
Category: File - :AlamoMemorial-5478.jpg|thumb|right|Memorial to the Alamo defenders
San Antonio grew to become the largest Spanish settlement in Texas, and for most of its history, the capital of the Spanish, later Mexican, province of Tejas. From San Antonio the Camino Real, today Nacogdoches Road in San Antonio, ran to the American border at the small frontier town of Nacogdoches. When Antonio López de Santa Anna unilaterally rescinded the Mexican Constitution of 1824 violence ensued in many states of Mexico. In a series of battles the Texian Army succeeded in forcing Mexican soldiers out of the settlement areas east of San Antonio. Under the leadership of Ben Milam, in the Battle of Bexar, December, 1835, Texian forces captured San Antonio from forces commanded by General Martin Perfecto de Cos, Santa Anna's brother in law. In the spring of 1836 Santa Anna marched on San Antonio. A volunteer force under the command of James C. Neill occupied and fortified the deserted mission. Upon his departure, the joint command of William Barrett Travis and James Bowie were left in charge of defending the old mission. The Battle of the Alamo took place from February 23 to March 6, 1836. The outnumbered Texian force was ultimately defeated, with all of the Alamo defenders killed. These men were seen as "martyrs" for the cause of Texas freedom and "Remember the Alamo" became a rallying cry in the Texian Army's eventual success at defeating Santa Anna's army.Juan Seguín, who organized the company of Hispanic patriots, that fought and died for Texas independence at the Battle of the Alamo, fought at the Battle of Concepcion, Siege of Bexar, and the Battle of San Jacinto, and served as mayor of San Antonio. He was forced out of that office, due to threats on his life, by sectarian newcomers and political opponents in 1842, becoming the last Hispanic mayor for nearly 150 years.
Category: File - :San antonio tex 1939.jpg|thumb|left|Aerial view of the city, San Antonio, December 4, 1939
In 1845, the United States finally decided to annex Texas and include it as a state in the Union. This led to the Mexican-American War.Interwiki: Dubious » date=July 2011 Though the U.S. ultimately won, the war was devastating to San Antonio, and, at its end, the population of the city had been reduced by almost two thirds, to only 800 inhabitants. By 1860, at the start of the Civil War, San Antonio had grown to a city of 15,000 people.
Following the Civil War, San Antonio prospered as a center of the cattle industry. During this period, San Antonio remained a frontier city, but its mixture of cultures also gave it a reputation as being beautiful and exotic. Frederick Law Olmstead, the architect who designed Central Park in New York City, once described San Antonio as having a, "jumble of races, costumes, languages, and buildings," which gave it a quality which only New Orleans could rival in, "odd and antiquated foreignness."
In 1877, the first railroad reached San Antonio and the city was no longer on the frontier but began to enter the mainstream of American society. At the beginning of the 20th century, the streets of downtown were widened to accommodate street cars and modern traffic, destroying many historic buildings in the process.
Like many municipalities in the American Southwest, San Antonio experiences steady population growth. The city's population has nearly doubled in 35 years, from just over 650,000 in the 1970 census to an estimated 1.2 million in 2005 through both steady population growth and land annexation (considerably enlarging the physical area of the city).Interwiki: Citation needed » date=March 2010

GEOGRAPHY

Interwiki: climate chart »
| San Antonio
| 38.6 | 62.1 | 1.66
| 42.4 | 67.1 | 1.75
| 49.9 | 74.3 | 1.89
| 56.9 | 80.4 | 2.60
| 65.5 | 86.0 | 4.72
| 71.6 | 91.4 | 4.30
| 74.0 | 94.6 | 2.03
| 73.6 | 94.7 | 2.57
| 68.8 | 90.0 | 3.00
| 59.4 | 82.0 | 3.86
| 48.6 | 71.4 | 2.58
| 40.8 | 64.0 | 1.96
| units = imperial
| float = right
| clear = both
| source = NOAA
San Antonio is located near 29.5°N 98.5°W about 80 miles southwest of its neighboring city, Austin. According to the United States Census Bureau, in 2000 the city had a total area of Interwiki: convert » 412.07|mi2|km2|sigfig=5—Interwiki: convert » 407.56|mi2|km2|sigfig=5 (98.9%) of land and Interwiki: convert » 4.51|mi2|km2|sigfig=3
(1.1%) of water. The city sits on the Balcones Escarpment.The altitude of San Antonio is Interwiki: convert » 772|ft|m|0 above sea level.
The primary source of drinking water for the city is the Edwards Aquifer. Impounded in 1962 and 1969, respectively, Victor Braunig Lake and Calaveras Lake were among the first reservoirs in the country built to use recycled treated wastewater for power plant cooling, reducing the amount of groundwater needed for electrical generation.

ECONOMY

Category: File - :STMC SA.jpg|center|550px|thumb|South Texas Medical Center
Category: File - :Valero campus (2).JPG|thumb|Headquarters of Valero Energy Corporation
San Antonio has a diversified economy with four primary focuses: financial services, government, health care, and tourism. Located northwest of the city center is the South Texas Medical Center, which is a conglomerate of various hospitals, clinics, and research (see Southwest Research Institute) and higher educational institutions.
The city is also home to one of the largest military concentrations in the United States. The defense industry in San Antonio employs over 89,000 and provides a $5.25 billion impact to the city's economy.
Twenty million tourists visit the city and its attractions every year, contributing substantially to the city's economy. The Henry B. Gonzalez Convention Center alone hosts more than 300 events each year with over 750,000 convention delegates from around the world. Tourism employs 94,000 citizens and makes an economic impact of over $10.7 billion in the local economy as revealed in the Economic Impact Study conducted every two years by the San Antonio Tourism Council and the research team of Dr. Richard Butler and Dr. Mary Stefl of Trinity University. Tourism also brings new annual revenues to the City of San Antonio and other governmental entities with the hotel & motel tax, sales taxes and other revenues from hospitality agreements and contracts. This number exceeded over $160 million in the 2004 study.
Of the 140 Fortune Global 500 companies headquartered in the US, San Antonio is home to two: Valero Energy Corp #33, and Tesoro Petroleum Corp #317.
San Antonio is home to five Fortune 500 companies: Valero Energy Corp, Tesoro, USAA, Clear Channel Communications and NuStar Energy. H-E-B, the 19th largest private company in the United States is also headquartered in San Antonio. Other companies headquartered in San Antonio are: Kinetic Concepts, Frost National Bank, Harte-Hanks, Eye Care Centers of America, Bill Miller Bar-B-Q Enterprises, Taco Cabana, Whataburger, and Rackspace.
Other large companies that operate regional headquarters in the city include: Nationwide Mutual Insurance Company, Kohl's, Allstate, Chase Bank, Philips, Wells Fargo, Toyota, Medtronic, Sysco, Caterpillar Inc., AT&T, West Corporation, Citigroup, Boeing, QVC, and Lockheed Martin.
In between the beginning of 1997 and March 11, 1998, San Antonio lost several major company headquarters. In 1997 Titan Holdings and USLD Communications had sold their operations to larger companies. After a Los Angeles buyout specialist purchased Builders Square, the company's operations were moved out of San Antonio.

EDUCATION

Category: File - :UTSAcampus2.jpg|thumb|University of Texas at San Antonio
Interwiki: Main » Education in San Antonio
San Antonio hosts over 100,000 students across its 31 higher-education facilities which include public supported schools such as, the University of Texas Health Science Center at San Antonio, the University of Texas at San Antonio, Texas A&M University–San Antonio, and the Alamo Community College District.
Category: File - :Trinity U Campus.jpg‎|170px|thumb|left|Trinity University
Private universities include top-rated Trinity University, St. Mary's University, Our Lady of the Lake University, University of the Incarnate Word, Baptist University of the Américas, and Wayland Baptist University. The San Antonio Public Library serves all of these institutions along with the 17 school districts within San Antonio.
The city is also home to more than 30 private schools and charter schools. These schools include: Central Catholic Marianist High School, Incarnate Word High School, Saint Mary's Hall, The Atonement Academy, Antonian College Preparatory High School, San Antonio Academy, Holy Cross High School, Providence High School, The Carver Academy, Keystone School, TMI — The Episcopal School of Texas, St. Anthony Catholic High School, Lutheran High School of San Antonio, and Harmony Science Academy.
San Antonio is also home to U.S. Air Force Basic Military Training. The Air Force only has one location for enlisted basic training: the 737th Training Group, at Lackland Air Force Base. All new Air Force recruits go through the same basic training at Lackland. Each year, over 35,000 new recruits go through AFBMT.
METC, (Military Education and Training Campus) which is the U.S. Military Medical Training at Fort Sam Houston hosts 30 programs and over 24,000 annual graduates. It is the largest Medical education center in the world.


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