You'll soon be seeing lots of familiar faces downtown, News Radio 1200 WOAI reports.
The city has announced plans to create what it calls the Alamo Sculpture Trail which will stretch from Alamo Plaza south on Alamo Street to the Briscoe Western Art Museum, tying the two attractions together and memorializing famous people who helped create Texas.
City Manager Sheryl Sculley says the sculpture trail will begin with several sculptures which have been displayed in a hallway at the Convention Center for twenty years. The life size bronze sculptures were given to the City by Sea World of Texas, and represting famous people from across Texas history, trailblazer Charles Goodnight, to Congresswoman Barbara Jordan, who was a trailblazer of a different kind. Other sculptures include William Barret Travis, Lyndon Johnson and composer Scott Joplin.
"The eight new ones will include Teddy Roosevelt, in fact that sculpture is completed and will be installed near the Menger Hotel," City Manager Sheryl Sculley said. "And Davy Crockett, James Bowie, Susanna Dickenson, John William Smith will also be placed at Alamo Plaza."
Even though Roosevelt never actually lived in Texas, he recruited his famous Spanish-American War battalion, the 'Rough Riders' in the bar of the Menger Hotel.
Crockett and Bowie, of course, were killed at the Battle of the Alamo, which Dickenson survived. Smith was the first Mayor of San Antonio under the Republic of Texas.
Sculley says there will be more sculptures created for the trail.
"The remaining three newly commissioned bronze statues include Hendrick Arnold, Juan Seguin, and Emily Morgan," she said. "They are still in design and fabrication. This will be a wonderful art installation, connecting the Briscoe Western Art Museum with Alamo Plaza."
Arnold was a pioneering African American who fought in the Texas Revolution and operated a grist mill near Mission San Juan. Seguin, who Seguin Texas is named for, was a colonel under Sam Houston who formally received the surrender of Mexican forces at the Alamo following the Battle of San Jacinto and is reputed to have buried the burned remains of the Alamo defenders at San Fernando Cathedral. Morgan, of course, the 'Yellow Rose of Texas,' who was also known as Emily West, is said under unproven legend to have distracted Mexican commander Santa Ana in his tent at San Jacinto, leaving him unprepared to fight the battle he lost to Houston.