After the big New Year's Even blowout, San Antonio's Tricentennial celebration is picking up with two exhibitions at the Witte Museum which look far more than 300 years into the city's past, News Radio 1200 WOAI reports.
"Gathering at the Waters," which opens next week, will look at the hunter gatherers who have called the San Antonio River home for 12,000 years, ever since the arrival of the first humans in what is now Texas.
The exhibition will take a look at the very first residents of what was in the distant future to become San Antonio, including how they lived, and how climate shifts over thousands of years affected the tribes' lifestyles. The exhibition will also look at how the San Antonio River played a 'pivotal role' in trading and settlement among tribes.
That exhibition will lead into the Witte's other Tricentennial event, called 'Confluence and Culture.' Opening in March, this exhibition will take a look at how early Spanish soldiers and settlers influenced how we live today, in everything from the sometimes baffling layout of local streets, to the sorts of industries that grew up in San Antonio and still remain today.
"Confluence and Culture" will include the well publicized 'augmented reality' look at the Battle of the Alamo, where people can use a special app to look at a diorama of the Alamo and 'see' the events of early 1836, including the arrival of Santa Ana's force, the withdrawl of the garrison into the Alamo, and the carriages carrying prominent local residents throughout the city.
"This will be a multi-faceted exhibition that will portray San Antonio as the hub of the frontier under many flags over three centuries," the Witte said.
The exhibitions are made possible by grants from the San Antonio Area Foundation and the John L. Santikos Charitable Foundation, .