Alamo Southwest Corner Radio Shack dig

[cantador4u]

While digging through the Nelson Book concerning the thread about the location of the powder house, the photo on the back cover spoke to me. It said, "I want top know more about what I see in the photo at the location of the southwest corner."

In the Alamo Archaeology Overview thread I found the following information:
1979 – Excavations in the Radio Shack Building, Southwest Corner of the Alamo Compound (Ivey, unpublished)

In 1979, an archaeological salvage project was carried out in the Radio Shack Building which was to be razed to make way for the Paseo del Alamo, a new city park linking Alamo Plaza to the San Antonio River Walk. Archaeology was conducted at the site by CAR archaeologists between July of 1979 and June of 1980. The foundation of the western wall of the Alamo as well as adobe buildings and an acequia channel were uncovered and recorded. In all, almost half of the site was excavated by archaeologists before bull dozers were allowed to raze the building. The exposed features were later reconstructed above ground in the park. A report on this project has not yet been published.

There is more info by Jake Ivy written before the excavation was ended at the Alamo de Paras site www.tamu.edu/ccbn/dewitt/adp/history/archaeology/westwall/westwall.html

So my questions are;

What we see sticking up in the picture, are they representations of the actual walls and building buried below? How far below?

What do they represent? is there a pamphlet, drawing, or diagram somewhere that identifies all this stuff?

How far from the exterior wall was the acequia found? How wide was it?

Does the north-south running dark stripe in the sidewalk represent anything?

I see the outline of the east section of the low barrack in the street. Is this based upon archaeology also?

It seems to me that the Radio Shack excavation was pretty important. During this, its 30th anniversary, is there any chance of seeing an official report anytime soon?

Paul Meske

[marklemon]

Jun 8, 2009 16:42:31 GMT -5 cantador4u said:

While digging through the Nelson Book concerning the thread about the location of the powder house, the photo on the back cover spoke to me. It said, "I want top know more about what I see in the photo at the location of the southwest corner."

In the Alamo Archaeology Overview thread I found the following information:
1979 – Excavations in the Radio Shack Building, Southwest Corner of the Alamo Compound (Ivey, unpublished)

In 1979, an archaeological salvage project was carried out in the Radio Shack Building which was to be razed to make way for the Paseo del Alamo, a new city park linking Alamo Plaza to the San Antonio River Walk. Archaeology was conducted at the site by CAR archaeologists between July of 1979 and June of 1980. The foundation of the western wall of the Alamo as well as adobe buildings and an acequia channel were uncovered and recorded. In all, almost half of the site was excavated by archaeologists before bull dozers were allowed to raze the building. The exposed features were later reconstructed above ground in the park. A report on this project has not yet been published.

There is more info by Jake Ivy written before the excavation was ended at the Alamo de Paras site www.tamu.edu/ccbn/dewitt/adp/history/archaeology/westwall/westwall.html

So my questions are;

What we see sticking up in the picture, are they representations of the actual walls and building buried below? How far below?

What do they represent? is there a pamphlet, drawing, or diagram somewhere that identifies all this stuff?

How far from the exterior wall was the acequia found? How wide was it?

Does the north-south running dark stripe in the sidewalk represent anything?

I see the outline of the east section of the low barrack in the street. Is this based upon archaeology also?

It seems to me that the Radio Shack excavation was pretty important. During this, its 30th anniversary, is there any chance of seeing an official report anytime soon?

Paul Meske

Paul,

Jake Ivey is the best person to answer your questions, but since he's not been around the forum lately, I'll try to take a stab at answering them.

First, the above ground "ruins" you see today at the top of the Paseo del Alamo are reconstructions of the old Charli house (actually, his carpenter shop, as his actual house was 35 feet or so outside the southwest corner). And while the northern and central sections of these ruins are, according to Jake, "more or less" accurately placed, the southernmost corner, where the 18 pounder was placed, is actually about 6 feet inside the Ripley's "Odditorium."
You see, the Paseo builders had to have a gap at the southern edge through which people could "paseo," and so they "fudged" the SW corner by about 12 feet, making it, in the ruins, about 12 feet too far north. SO when people go to the ruins looking at the reconsstructed "ruins" thinking that they can see where the 18 pounder once was placed, they really need to step into the "odditorium" and look behind the fat bearded lady, to find the right spot.
In my book, "The Illustrated Alamo 1836" on pages 35 through 37 there are a series of photographs which show this area pretty clearly.
On the acequia question, here's where I may run afoul of Jake. To the best of my recollection, the ditch found by Jake was fairly close to the outside of the SW corner. In reality, at least according to my best estimates, the outer acequia at the SW corner was some 50 feet or more due west of the actual corner, and the old (dry) section of acequia running out of the south wall, and past the SW corner passed about 20 feet from the SW corner. So unless Jake's dig went out farther than I think it did, he may have found an outer ditch dug below the Charli house which may have been dug for defensive purposes. This is far from certain, but it is my best guess at this time. Jake needs to weigh in here....

The north-south dark line marks the approximate site of the old, inner acequia that ran through the western part of the compound.

Don't go by the "planter" that is supposed to mark the site of the low barracks. It is generally in the right place, but is at the wrong angle. The present "low barracks" (planter) sits perpendicularly to Alamo street, where as in reality, the actual low barracks building runs under the present site, but at a noticeable angle.

I have no information on the data from the dig being written up in a report, but have seen Jake's data concerning the excavation, and it is very interesting. One day, hopefully soon, he'll publish his work in a book.

Hope this helped a little.
Mark

[jrboddie]

There is also an east/west line of dark pavers that crosses Alamo Plaza that suggests the location of the southern wall. You should be able to see it using the street level view in Google Maps here: tinyurl.com/kovvd5

[Don Allen]

One thing that's always puzzled me about that area is how fast the ground drops off there, at that reconstruction, towards the river. Maybe you can answer this Mark...is this a good representation of the slope of the land from the wall to the river back in 1836 or is this a strictly modern bit of topography?

I've wondered if this apparent drop-off is due to the fact that the modern sidewalk is pretty built up from 170 years ago.

[Kevin Young]

Don,

Not to jump into Mark's interesting and excellent interpretation of the sw corner, but are you talking about the current drop of the land as you walk away from the reconstructed walls towards Losoya Street?

One sad point about all of that work is that the original section of outer wall that was uncovered by Jake and company was covered back over to protect it. When the contractor came in to do the paseo section, he actually destroyed it.

[Herb]

Jun 8, 2009 21:57:24 GMT -5 Kevin Young said:

One sad point about all of that work is that the original section of outer wall that was uncovered by Jake and company was covered back over to protect it. When the contractor came in to do the paseo section, he actually destroyed it.

The reason why the "viewing box" is of the internal and not the external wall's foundation!

According to Jake in March 2008, where the present waterfall, "comes out" of the buiding on the north side of the walkway, is where they found the acequia. and by "artistic" design is supposed to represent the acequia. By memory it's probably around 30 - 40 feet from the original west wall.

The "sudden" drop off to the river is indeed accurate - the bluff along this curve of the river and the minimal flat area outside the walls was very much a limiting factor to any attack on the southern portion of the West Wall.

[cantador4u]

Thanks for the information everyone, but no good deed goes unpunished. As with anything relating the Alamo, answering one question only raises 10 more questions.

For some reason I am under the impression that Gen Cos dug the acequia along the west wall in 1835, but maybe not?? Could he have been thinking of using it as an impediment to an attack along the west wall, sort of like a moat? Also, I see drawings that show jacales between the acequia and the west wall and was wondering if there was actually room for them to be there.

It's tough enough to find accurate information about the Alamo without official dis-information, specifically the location of the southwest corner. How do we know that the true corner is in the odditorium? Does this mean that the line crossing the street allegedly representing the south wall is knowingly inaccurate? Is the planter representing the low barrack INTENTIONALLY off-angle? How far off is the placement of the low barrack?

How much of the foundation was destroyed by the contractor? Did he wipe out a major section or a little bit. Another way of asking the question, How much of what was excavated and attempted to be preserved remains?

A little off topic, is there a marker on the post-office that indicates the location of the north wall?

I REALLY have to get to San Antonio to see all this for myself. I'm living vicariously through photos I find on the internet. I was at the Alamo in 1971 or so, but I didn't really know much at the time. I also saw the New Orleans Grays' banner at Chapultepec castle the summer of 1986. I recall that knew it had SOMETHING to do with the Alamo but not enough to be able to explain it to my wife. It was in a glass case and quite faded. I looked to see if I took a photo of it but couldn't find anything. Nuts!

Thanks again. - Paul Meske, Sun Prairie, Wisconsin

[Herb]

Jun 12, 2009 11:50:39 GMT -5 cantador4u said:

How much of the foundation was destroyed by the contractor? Did he wipe out a major section or a little bit. Another way of asking the question, How much of what was excavated and attempted to be preserved remains?

Paul,

IIRC, what Jake told me is that a bulldozer operator got too close to the exposed wall, and the whole exterior wall collapsed. The way I understand it, the interior wall remains intact under the current "park". Jake, said that this was probably the only remnants of the whole west wall - as the Radio Shack was the only building over the former location that did not have a basement.

[Kevin Young]

I was standing there when the contractor did it and made the call out to UTSA. He assumed that the wall was stone, and did not "see" the adobe when he was digging.

The Remember The Alamo building did not have a basement. And as far as I remember, they did not do a dig because they were simply covering over the site.

[Herb]

Jim and I were discussing this, about the SW corner actually being in the Odditorium. I recently found a sketch that shows the dig site and the SW corner inside the building - it looks like a fairly significant difference in the distance. This raises a couple of questions.

Jim brought up, whether or not the general consenus that the Radio Shack dig ruled out the lunette drawn by Sanchez-Navarro at the SW corner was right or not. With the actual SW corner outside the dig area - can we really assume that there was no lunette there? Even though the trench - running north - was not found.

Secondly, as I understand it when the outline of the Alamo was drawn for Mark Lemon's tour a couple of years the measurements for the West Wall were started from what would be the incorrect City Markings of the SW corner. This raises a lot of questions about where key features a long the West Wall truly were , and the total length of the West Wall (ie where was the North Wall actually)?

Anybody got a clue?

[Allen Wiener]

Wasn't the west wall a haphazard affair that just grew in stages as a collection of several separate buildings that were eventually enclosed with an outer wall - the actual west wall? Also, is the current marker near the old post office that marks the north wall correct? What are the sources of these markers, or identifications of key spots in the original Alamo compound? Anyone know?

Allen

[Jim Boylston]

Allen, what Wolfpack's getting at is, in 2008, when Mark gave his walking tour, measurements of the west wall length were taken. The question is, if the Odditorium is where the latest information puts the SW corner, weren't the west wall measurements in '08 taken from the wrong starting point? Shouldn't they have been started farther south? If so, where does that put the relative positions of the northwest corner, north wall, and structures along the west?
Jim

[marklemon]

Last march Rick Range and myself took a new set of measurements taking into account the Southwesterly angle of the Low barrack, which in turn "pushed" the SW corner of the compound into the footprint of the Odditorium. We used numbers we already had, as well as more precise numbers from Jake Ivey's research. His conclusion from the Radio Shack dig was that the City "fudged" the actual SW corner, pushing it more to the north to make a "Paseo" in the "Paseo del Alamo." In other words, they left a gap for the southernmost steps down to the river, assuming, I suppose, that no one would know the difference. But his measurements and research indicated that the northernmost section of the fake "ruined" adobe house reconstruction was about right on the money. So, in March, Rick and I started our measurements from there (and not the "fake" SW corner) and moved north.
My recollection was that this did not appreciably change the placement of the main west wall features too much. As of now, we have a set of numbers which takes into account both the known remnants in the south wall digs (Fox) as well as Ivey's research. By the way, we found that the present brass marker just at the north end of the Gibbs Building (north wall) on the sidewalk is almost exactly on point with our numbers. What's more, Rick had a friend with GPR (Ground Penetrating Radar) walk across Alamo Street in this same (NW) area, and he found a large, thick (east-west-running), anomaly just where the north wall footing should be. We, of course realized that there were a number of intrusions under the pavement, such as water lines, and sewage, etc, but these lines should run parallel with the road, not perpendicular to it. So, there is a strong possibility that he found the old remnants of the north wall footing.
Mark

[Jim Boylston]

Mark, did any of these findings affect the position of what may have been Travis' HQ? Any chance that it might not be occupied by the horror house?

[marklemon]

To the best of my recollection, the "Travis" (Trevino) House was some 70 to 72 feet long, and the SW "fudge" was about 10 to 12 feet, so no, the "horror house" still sits on the site of the birthplace of Texas' most heroic document.