San Pedro Creek Culture Park: San Antonio's Other River Walk

Forbes

3 days ago

The "Restoration" section of Kathy and Lionel Sosa's 'La Gloriosa Historia de San Pedro Creek On My Mind' ceramic tile mural. Chadd Scott
The San Antonio River Walk has been drawing tourists since the 1940s. They have come by the tens of millions through the years, strolling after visits to the Alamo a block away.
Visitors enjoy the shops and restaurants and hotels lining the banks of the river's downtown loop. It's concrete banks. The San Antonio River through San Antonio is river in name only. Man-made efforts to control the flow of water dating back over 100 years have converted the river into what would more accurately be described as a flood control ditch. An engineering project. No more natural than the canals of Venice.
Like all rivers, the San Antonio River periodically floods. At least it used to. Dams, straightening, dredging, channelizing, and an unseen network of pipes and drains and overflow tunnels have nearly eliminated the river's likelihood of overflowing its banks and destroying businesses downtown.
That's good.
The cost, however, was the river.
That's bad.
The San Antonio River through downtown exemplifies mid-20th century thinking about urban river flood control. Then, the goal was moving water away from populated areas as fast as possible by deepening, straightening, and lining with concrete river banks and bottom. Nature and aesthetics be dammed. Like the Los Angeles River, another river in name only.
Twenty-first century thinking about flood control on urban rivers flows 180-degrees in the opposite direction. Today's best practices encourage moving flood water as slowly as possible by returning bends and curves to urban rivers. Adding native plants and trees along the banks to soak up and slow down water. River rocks and aquatic plants in the channel to slow down water. Less concrete. Attempting to mimic nature, not control it.
Efforts at controlling nature rarely work long term.
This 21st century thinking can be seen in San Antonio along the San Pedro Creek Culture Park, a 2.2-mile river walk flowing through the city a few blocks west from its more famous predecessor. The Locals River Walk
A "before" picture of what would become the San Pedro Creek Culture Park. San Antonio River Authority
Groundbreaking on the San Pedro Creek Culture Park began in 2016. The $300 million dollar project completed its final section in May of this year. The Creek has been rebuilt, not restored. There was nothing left to restore. When work began, parts of the Creek had been fully channelized, other portions covered by development, others existing as nothing more than trash and weed choked trickles.
San Pedro Creek Culture Park, like the San Antonio River Walk, is an engineering project. Unnatural. The great difference, however, is the Culture Park having been rebuilt in a naturalistic way.
The Creek was widened to slow the flow of water. Curves were built into its banks and those banks planted with native plants and trees returning some small portion of the biodiversity the Creek once featured.
Visitors to San Antonio staying at the Element San Antonio Riverwalk hotel downtown are on the doorstep of the River Walk and two blocks from San Pedro Creek for easy comparison and contrast.
An "after" picture along the northern section of the San Pedro Creek Culture Park from the same viewpoint as the above "before" picture. San Antonio River Authority
From time immemorial, indigenous people occupied areas around San Pedro Creek taking advantage of its incredible natural abundance. Then the settler colonials came, first with their missions and towns, then their industry. The Creek–and San Antonio River and nearly every other river in America–became a 'working' river in the 19th and 20th centuries, used for turning water wheels, for power, for tanning and textiles and milling and soap making in the case of San Pedro Creek. The industrial waste, and then their city's human waste, was sent into the river. The rivers died. The fish died.
Giant freshwater river shrimp from San Pedro Creek as long as a man's forearm used to feed local people. The species is now locally extinct. A reminder can be found in Camaron Street paralleling the northern section of the Culture Park. 'Camarón' translates to 'shrimp' in Spanish.
America's rivers were turned into lifeless toxic waste dumps and open sewers.
San Pedro Creek could never have been returned to what it was in 1750, but it's a hell of a lot better now than it was in 1950, or 2015. Now, San Pedro Creek casually makes its way through San Antonio past park spaces, green spaces, and art installations created as part of the project, past the University of Texas San Antonio's Institute for Cyber Security and a new federal courthouse.
In summertime, the Park's length features a riot of blooming wildflowers attracting clouds of butterflies–queen, Phaon crescent, gulf fritillary, monarch. Herons and egrets have returned to the channel. Turtles–big ones–occupy a pool beside the massive flood control tunnel outlet on the southern end.
In 1991, a tunnel 24-feet in diameter was constructed at a depth of 140-feet below the Creek's surface running a length of 1.1 miles to both divert flood water out of the creek bed downtown and supply water to the creek bed in times of drought. An even larger stormwater tunnel was constructed in the mid-90s under the San Antonio River through downtown.
Interstates 10 and 35 bracket the Park on either end, eight lanes of traffic, an additional reminder that the Creek is now an urban science project. To wit, it flows with treated wastewater. It's perfectly safe and has no smell, although you wouldn't want to drink it. The natural springs and aquifer once feeding the Creek no longer supply enough water–too much is taken by thirsty San Antonians and their homes and businesses and agriculture and golf courses.
Unlike the touristy downtown River Walk, the San Pedro Creek Culture Park was designed and built for locals. A community amenity. As it always has, San Pedro Creek continues giving more than it takes. Its gifts today are beautification, recreation, shade, cleaner air and water, walking and biking paths, dabs of nature in the city, the enchanting sound of falling water, programs and events, and art. San Antonio's History In Art
A portion of Adrian M. Garcia's ceramic tile mural 'De Todos Caminos Somos Todos Uno (From All Roads, We Are All One).' Chadd Scott
A perforated stainless steel wall screening mechanical operations from visitors sets the Culture Park's northern limit. Among those operations, a seine removing trash from the water flowing here out of San Pedro Springs Park 1.5 miles north, the original spring site feeding the Creek. Fun fact: San Pedro Springs Park is America's second oldest city park behind only Boston Common.
At night, the wall's perforations are backlit to reveal what the stars looked like on May 5, 1718, the day San Antonio was founded by Spanish colonizers.
A large pool fed by falling water from behind the steel wall begins the Creek's new journey. This is Plaza de Fundación. Visitors can walk over a metal grate and look down at the flood control tunnel beneath, or wade in calmer waters below. Here, elevated on one side of the bank, Creek Lines mirrors the historic flow of San Pedro Creek to its confluence with the San Antonio River via a canopy cutout. Thirty curved poles more than 10 feet tall, each with a plaque detailing a singular event from the city's history, support the structure.
Two blocks south of Plaza de Fundación, Adrian M. Garcia's ceramic tile mural De Todos Caminos Somos Todos Uno (From All Roads, We Are All One) stretches 117-feet along the creek channel. The artwork shares snippets of San Antonio history from indigenous habitation on either end, working toward present day in the middle.
Like almost all the Culture Park's commissioned artists, Garcia is local. She was born and raised on the West side, San Antonio's historic Mexican district. San Antonio was segregated and the Creek acted as dividing line between the West side and the Anglo part of town, the downtown with banks and tourist attractions and government buildings.
Joe Lopez' Bellos Recuerdos del Teatro Alameda y Tiempos Pasados recalls this segregated mid-20th century period in the city's history with another tile mural along the creek bed. Murals and tile work across San Antonio recall Mexico's wonderful mural and tile traditions.
Lopez' artwork depicts the Alameda Theater, a cultural hub for the city's Spanish speaking community throughout the 1900s. The title translates to 'beautiful memories of Alameda Theater from times past.' The historic theater visible from San Pedro Creek in front of the mural, and the first in San Antonio to integrate, has been vacant for decades.
Continuing south and occupying the most developed portion of the Creek, Kathy and Lionel Sosa's La Gloriosa Historia de San Pedro Creek On My Mind –another spectacular tile mural–shares five eras of San Antonio history across five separate murals: Foundation, Confrontation, Separation, Inundation, Restoration.
The colorful images are a mashup of people, places, animals, events, and symbols each deeply meaningful to city residents and the visitor experience today. It's one of the finest public art projects in America.
A previously straightened and channelized portion of the San Pedro Creek through downtown San Antonio. This picture is taken from the same vantage point in the opposite direction as the below "after" picture. Chadd Scott
An "after" picture of the San Pedro Creek Culture Park project through downtown San Antonio looking north with the creek bed widened, curved, and the banks filled with native plants and trees. Chadd Scott
San Pedro Creek Culture Park's linear continuity is only broken in one place, for a block, just south of the stretch through the heart of downtown. City sidewalks easily span the gap. The southernmost portion, the last to be completed, traverses more industrial sections of the city before opening up to feature the Park's greatest stretch of nature. Steep, wide banks, not yet filled out by native plants and wildflowers, already greet passersby with a melody of birdsong.
For lovers of native plants and trees and butterflies and birds and nature in urban settings along rivers like this, the San Antonio River Walk's southern section, the Mission Reach, has been built with this in mind, not commerce. After exploring San Pedro Creek Culture Park, go straight to Confluence Park, a national model for restoring urban waterways, sustainable urban parks, and environmental consciousness in big cities.
A worthwhile break on the southern end of the Culture Park comes by way of Piedras Pegras de Noche, a local Mexican restaurant far off the tourist path where two large breakfast tacos and a pecan pancake costs less than $10. Total. The walkway goes right past the eatery's parking lot.
At the Culture Park's southern end, one last art installation deserves attention. Mark Reigelman's giant, Corten steel, cupped hand, Falling Water captures stormwater runoff from the interstate above, filtering out trash and sending the cascading water into a natural area for filtration and dispersement before joining San Pedro Creek. More From Forbes Forbes Strolling Through Culture And Cuisine: One Perfect Day In San Antonio By Chadd Scott Forbes Rediscovering Michael Tracy At The McNay Art Museum In San Antonio By Chadd Scott Forbes Mississippi River Centers Inaugural Wakpa Triennial Art Festival In Minnesota's Twin Cities By Chadd Scott