Author: Dean Kirkpatrick

I was five years old when my parents brought me to The Alamo. I saw it for the first time, after dark, with not a living soul around and barely enough light to see the figures on the monument.
I remember that the sky was deep blue, and the pure white flood lights aimed up at the Chapel painted the yellow stone walls with a heavenly luster.
I don't remember what my parents said about the Alamo that night, but the shimmering vision, and the feeling that I was looking at a sacred place, stayed with me.
Through the years I never questioned the lessons that most of us were taught in school about Crockett, Bowie, Travis, and the others who died there, but when i moved to San Antonio and began to pass The Alamo often, I felt drawn to learn more. I wanted to know why these men came to the Alamo, then died trying to hold it. Did they knowingly sacrifice their lives in the name of Texas liberty, or were they victims of circumstance?
When and how were they killed and why did their fellow Texans not come to their rescue?
I searched for answers in books, historical journals, archives, and maps, and by talking with historians in San Antonio.
The answers I sound are part of a story that is best told on the streets of San Antonio, because the places where it all happened are still here.
If you would like to learn what happened and why, and see where it happened, come with me now.

Hardcover. 106 pages.

send to a friend

print notes