Testing of the San José Mission Acequia, San Antonio Missions National Historical Park, Bexar County, Texas

The purpose of this project was to locate and identify the acequia madre, or main irrigation ditch, where it ran between the east wall of Mission San Jose and San Jose Drive and to trace out the location of another ditch, part of which was found during road construction in the area in 1981. After confirmation of the location of the main ditch through deed and archival research, a backhoe was used to precisely locate the ditch on the site. The second ditch was relocated and its course followed to the north boundary of the park property in this area. The secondary ditch appears to be a lateral which once took off from the main ditch somewhere north of Pyron Road and rejoined it some distance to the south, in order to irrigate the fields outside the east wall.