San Antonio Missions National Historical Park

Recipients of the 2014 NPS Environmental Achievement Awards

The National Park Service congratulates the regional recipients of the 2025 Excellence in Volunteerism Awards. These nominees embody the values of service, engagement, and stewardship fundamental to our national parks.

A Day in the Life of a Spanish Missionary -- Friar Alonso de Benavides, 1630. An Essay from the Spanish Colonial Missions Travel Itinerary

Summary and recent findings for amphibian monitoring by the Gulf Coast I&M Network at San Antonio Missions National Historical Park

Read more about University of Texas at Austin Ph.D. candidate, Kelton Sheridan's archeological research at Mission Espada's Indigenous Quarters as she explores questions such as: What food did people eat? What household objects did they own? What belief and traditions did people keep?

It's about to begin! What parks will the monarchs amazing journey take them?

Corn (maize) was an important part of indigenous people's diets in the Americas, but the Spanish who colonized the area preferred wheat to corn. Colonized diets, meaning the diets the Spanish brought to the New World, became the main recipes at the San Antonio Missions. The Mission San José grist mill, powered by acequias (irrigation ditches), was built in 1794 to grind wheat using water from the San Antonio River.

When Cherry Payne was first interviewed by Dorothy Boyle Huyck in the 1970s, she was a young interpretive ranger at Grand Teton National Park at the start of her NPS career. In an oral history interview recorded in 2020, she reflected on where that career had taken her. Each step of the way, Payne balanced commitment with compromise as she made decisions about family life, professional life, and park management.