San Antonio

San Antonio is the county seat of Bexar County, Texas.

San Antonio was named for Saint Anthony of Padua, whose feast day it was when a Spanish expedition stopped in the area in 1691. San Antonio was the third-largest city within the state of Texas and ninth in the United States as of the 2000 U.S. Census, with a population of 1.1 million. The July 1, 2004 estimate by the U.S. Census Bureau, however, placed the city’s population of 1,236,249 and is now the second-largest city in Texas (surpassing Dallas) and eighth in the United States. San Antonio is the county seat of Bexar County.⁶ The San Antonio metropolitan area (MSA) is the third largest within Texas with a population of about 1.8 million as of the 2003 U.S. Census estimates.

Famous for its Riverwalk and the Alamo, its Tejano culture, the three-time NBA Champion Spurs basketball team, the Tower of the Americas, and being home to SeaWorld and Fiesta Texas theme parks, San Antonio is visited by 20 million tourists per year.

The city is home to Fort Sam Houston, Lackland Air Force Base, Randolph Air Force Base and Brooks City Base.

San Antonio is home to the first museum of Modern Art in Texas, the Marion Koogler McNay Art Museum^[1].

SBC Communications, Valero Energy Corp, USAA, Tesoro Petroleum Corp, Southwest Research Institute, H-E-B supermarkets and Clear Channel Communications are headquartered in San Antonio.

San Antonio is also home to the South Texas Medical Center, the largest medical research and care provider in South Texas.

The Fairmont Hotel, built in 1906, is in the Guinness Book of World Records as one of the heaviest buildings ever moved intact. It was placed in its new location, three blocks south of the Alamo, over four days in 1985, and cost $650,000 to move.