SAN ANTONIO – Widely known for its Spanish colonial missions and the Battle of the Alamo, The Seed of Texas interactive website is trying to make the history of San Antonio more accessible to anyone.
“We’re doing it in a way to connect it with the broad general public,” said Jessica Nowlin, one of the principal investigators on the project, and a UTSA lecturer in the department of philosophy and classics, as well as an archaeologist.
In addition to teachers and students, Betty Bueche, director of the Bexar Heritage Department and Bexar Heritage and Parks, said it also could become a resource for public policy makers.
She said they could make better decisions by learning, “How did things evolve to where they are now today?”
Nowlin said she agrees, “I feel like history is the best way to make informed decisions about how we choose to live today.”
They said stage one of The Seed of Texas goes as far back as prehistoric times, before and after the Ice Age, to the earliest human settlements, to 1821 with the end of Spanish rule. From there, stage two goes through 1877 when the railroad arrived in Bexar County. Still to come, stage three through the end of World War II in 1945.
According to its website, “Work continues on additional material that will carry the story down to present day.”
Bueche said, “It’s like reading a series of novels,” then looking forward to the next one.
The Seed of Texas also has interactive features, such as map overlays showing “then and now” comparisons of various locations, as well as archival records posted online.
Nowlin said, “I feel like you can do really great deep dives or you can just kind of play around with the maps and look at really interesting things.”