I must of drove by Espada Dam hundreds of times in the past and didn’t even know it. Today we are used to turning a knob and out comes water, but back in the day they used acequias to get water to remote places. It pretty much looks the same as it did before except for the noise of traffic and the paved streets. Espada Dam is located north of Mission San Francisco de la Espada and Mission San Juan de Capistrano and south of the Alamo and Mission San Jose y San Miguel de Aguayo. It is in the San Antonio River and has withstood many years of destructive floods with only minor repairs required to maintain its sound condition. Espada Dam was constructed sometime between 1731 and 1745. The dam was originally two hundred and seventy feet long and was built on a natural rock foundation.
The Espada Dam and Aqueduct had a huge impact on the initial survival of a new mission which depended upon the planting and harvesting of crops. In south central Texas, intermittent rainfall the need for a reliable water source made the design and installation of an acequia system a high priority. It wasn’t only the little unpredicted rainfall but th
e fact that the Indians were not used to living in one place. Most Indians in Texas were nomadic and traveled were their food did so staying in one place was unheard of. Irrigation was so important to Spanish colonial settlers that they measured cropland in suertes -the amount of land that could be watered in one day. The dam and irrigation system was engineered by Franciscan Missionaries and constructed by Indian converts. It raised the level of the river so water could enter the acequia. The eight foot tall structure diverts approximately four thousand five hundred gallons of water per minute into the four mile long irrigation ditch known as "Acequia de Espada". By gravity flow the acequia provides irrigation water for four hundred acres of land in the vicinity of Mission San Francisco de la Espada. A system of floodgates, the mayordomo, or ditch master, controlled the volume of water sent to each field for irrigation.
The importance of the Espada Dam today is that it is a historical marker for what the missionaries accomplished. The Espada Dam is the oldest
continuously used Spanish diversion dam in Texas. It still diverts water from the old San Antonio River channel into the acequia madre, or main water ditch, to irrigate Mission Espada’s fields. Espada Dam is also important today because it does still work so it is still used to water farm land around the mission. It is also a tourist attraction which brings people and money to San Antonio to help it to continue to grow. It is also a way to experience a different way of living since most of the things at Mission Espada still work and for the most part still look the same as they did when they were built.
The Espada Dam and Aqueduct had a huge impact on the initial survival of a new mission which depended upon the planting and harvesting of crops. In south central Texas, intermittent rainfall the need for a reliable water source made the design and installation of an acequia system a high priority. It wasn’t only the little unpredicted rainfall but th
e fact that the Indians were not used to living in one place. Most Indians in Texas were nomadic and traveled were their food did so staying in one place was unheard of. Irrigation was so important to Spanish colonial settlers that they measured cropland in suertes -the amount of land that could be watered in one day. The dam and irrigation system was engineered by Franciscan Missionaries and constructed by Indian converts. It raised the level of the river so water could enter the acequia. The eight foot tall structure diverts approximately four thousand five hundred gallons of water per minute into the four mile long irrigation ditch known as "Acequia de Espada". By gravity flow the acequia provides irrigation water for four hundred acres of land in the vicinity of Mission San Francisco de la Espada. A system of floodgates, the mayordomo, or ditch master, controlled the volume of water sent to each field for irrigation.The importance of the Espada Dam today is that it is a historical marker for what the missionaries accomplished. The Espada Dam is the oldest
continuously used Spanish diversion dam in Texas. It still diverts water from the old San Antonio River channel into the acequia madre, or main water ditch, to irrigate Mission Espada’s fields. Espada Dam is also important today because it does still work so it is still used to water farm land around the mission. It is also a tourist attraction which brings people and money to San Antonio to help it to continue to grow. It is also a way to experience a different way of living since most of the things at Mission Espada still work and for the most part still look the same as they did when they were built. 
1 comment:
lol omg this is so BS 101 lol haha
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