U.S. San Antonio Arsenal

The United States Arsenal in San Antonio was an important military post from 1859 until 1949, Congress debated the feasibility of establishing a permanent military installation in San Antonio for many months before Senator Jefferson Davis and others who favored the Texas site secured the San Antonio location. Later Daivis got the appropriations for the arsenal in-creased from $15,000 to $21,000. By September of 1859 the State of Texas gave to the military almost sixteen acres which had been purchased from P. H. Bell and G.P. Devine of San Anton Additional acreage was acquired in 1881. General David Emanuel Twiggs, veteran of the Mexican War and the War of 1812 and first commander of the Arsenal, assumed command of the Department of Texas for the Army in 1857 and moved his headquarters to the arsenal site at the old homestead of Dr. James M. Devine, former treasurer and mayor of San Antonio, when construction on the Arsenal began in 1858. General Twiggs did not keep his head-quarters long but the Devine estate remained the Commanding Officer's headquarters until ca. 1883. For almost three years the Arsenal served principally as a storage depot for ordnance supplies.

At the beginning of the Civil War in 1861 Ben McCulloch's state troops forced General Twiggs to surrender all forces and stores under his control: consequently, Twiggs was summarily dismissed from the Union Army although later that same year he was commissioned a major-general in the Confederate Anny. The Confederacy used this base to outfit and supply troops in the lower Rio Grande Valley, in the frontier forts, and for the Sibley Brigade which invaded New Mexico in 1862. At this same time two powder mills nearby furnished as much as 80,000 pounds of powder for the arsenal. Leather goods as well as bullets also were manufactured there by civilians under the direction of the Ordnance Detachment of the military. Following the Civil War the Arsenal compound became the chief source of supplies for troops on the Western frontier.

The twenty acre military reservation was continued as a supply depot during both world wars with 428,117,295 pounds of ammunition being received and 337,414,700 pounds shipped from July 1, 1941 to December 31, 1945 during World War II. Back in 1919, immediately after the First World War, as many as thirty-eight buildings composed the Arsenal area while only six buildings remain today. Although the government closed the Arsenal in 1949 it still uses the buildings for government offices. Throughout almost one hundred years the United States Arsenal contributed to making San Antonio one of the largest military cities in the country.

The Arsenal site, which was designated a historic Texas Landmark by the Texas State Historical Survey Committee in 1965, borders the historic King William area on ^he East with the San Antonio River being the divider between the two places. Both of these important historical and architectural sites are now jeopardized by a proposed expressway and a federal building project which would infringe upon the Arsenal site itself.