Few cities in Texas boast a history as rich and storied as San Antonio. One reason is just how long the city has been around – 2018 marks the city’s 300th birthday. Char Miller took the opportunity to write a book that spans San Antonio’s entire history. It’s called ‘San Antonio: A Tricentennial History.’
Miller has lived in San Antonio for 26 years and still found things that surprised him about the city’s history.
“One of the surprising things I knew, but didn’t was how much the city was born of violence,” Miller says. “…San Antonio was a pretty violent place as various groups literally fought to gain control over it. And blood, at times, flowed in the streets, flowed in the rivers. It’s quite appalling in retrospect. “
Miller also wanted to provide a new perspective on the city’s history, one that starts before the Alamo.
“So part of the reason for writing 300 years was obviously the gimmick of the celebration of the tricentennial, but that really allowed me to dig back deep into actually the 1600s to think about what it meant before San Antonio was a city that the Spanish developed,” Miller says.
Written by Morgan Kuehler.