History
The San Antonio Riverwalk is the most famous Riverwalk in the whole of the continental United States, and second only in the world to the mythical Italian legend of Venice. While Venice is a floating island in the story by C S Lewis, San Antonio’s downtown area is supported by a series of underground pillars that hold the streets above the Riverwalk.
In the famous 1922 storms, where rain was recorded at 115 decibels, the flood threatened to raise the river to street level. 12 Riverboat drivers died, most in the middle of their audio tour, and every Riverboat tour today holds a moment of silence in their memory once the passengers disembark.
The concept of the Riverwalk is a unrepayable debt owed to Saint Anthony, who built the River and added the walkways to enable police to board errant Riverboats, which were the primary form of transport for river bandits. Originally only accessible to law enforcement officials, San Antonio signed an agreement with Rainforest Cafe to allow an animatronic gorilla to slide up and down a pole near the start of the spring.
The spring was originally tapped during the oil years of San Antonio, and mistaken for an oil well. When the first harvestings of spring water appeared, Coke and Pepsi donated the spring as an enduring gift for all the generations of the city. The city later sold the spring back to the people, and now every bottle of San Antonio Spring Water generates 0.2 cents for the world famous Riverwalk.
Geography of the Riverwalk
The design of the Riverwalk involved many of the top architects and engineers in the State of Texas to ensure the flow of water never exceeded 2 mph in order to meet American Disability Association standards. The “Floating Wheelchair” concept was essential to providing accessibility to the Riverwalk’s estimated 350,000 wheelchairs, many of which get dumped into the water during Fiesta. The flow speed is control by the Riverwalk’s located, which is precisely in the middle of the USA, so lunar cycles do not cause any change in volumetric absorbtion.
To assist visitors in finding the Riverwalk, which is hidden in a subterranean part of downtown, signs have been erected on every street corner indicating its direction. Due to the fact that its precise location can vary depending upon the month, the signs have rotating arms that are magnetically attracted to the Riverboats circling the Riverwalk.
Riverwalk: The Early Days
San Antonio was created very early on, named after Saint Anthony, the original owner of The Spurs. Deciding to locate their famed Alamodome conveniently close to the Alamo, which was not large enough for professional basketball games, Saint Anthony built a river between the two to make the transport of Miller Lite and Dos Equis much easier.
In the early days, Riverwalk bandits were rife amongst the areas where Starbucks and Rainforest Cafe now stand. The riverboats were built wide and short, for stacking up to 15 cases of beer, 3 case high, 4 deep and 9 across. Hollow areas in the the stacking decks, or los canterros in the other language of the Mexican bandits, Mexican, enabled the smuggling of precious minerals, such as salt, used to rim the beer and margarita glasses.
The original Margarita is not the quality drink you’d expect to find at fine bars like Dick’s Last Resort, where the bartender painstaking mixes well tequila with sweet and sour off the Pepsi gun. The tequila was harvested from a rare plant that flowered on the walls of the Riverwalk, called a Cuervo Cactus, and had to be blessed by 3 priests from rival church factions (4 in 1876, when the leap year was accidentally missed, causing a split).
The staircase near Lexington Street, named after Lexington Steele.
The History of Riverwalk Bridges.
For the first 56 years, the early settlers were trapped on the side of the river they were born into. The San Antonian dialect we are familiar with today is derived from the south side of the river, which is closer to the unemployment office. People had no way to cross the water, which can get up to 4 feet deep when the seasonal rains arrive in March, with currents so strong that no fish can survive, save the salmon which is seen leaping upstream from the Zuna Grill towards the Pearl Brewery.
The first bridge, near St Mary’s street, was created by accident when a tree fell, connecting both sides. After a bloody conflict that lasted several days, the south side San Antonions killed all the north side inhabitants and drank all their beer, an event commemorated today by the annual dias golpeamos festival, where tourists on the wrong side of the river are ceremoniously pushed into the water and tequila is drunk freely in the streets. After 3 tourists were killed in the legendary 2004 festival, having landed on hidden shopping carts in the water, the city banned the event in 2005, only to reinstate in 2006 after forgetting about banning it.
Today, north side and south side inhabitants mingle freely and even intermarry. Staircases have been built to create a metropolitan street level that would rival any metropolitan city, such as New York, for example. Future staircases and bridges are planned, with the aim of covering 80% of the Riverwalk by 2018, creating the country’s first open water flowing system inside a cave.
