SAN ANTONIO ― The most famous building in Texas is smaller than you expect, and it’s about as pretty as your average California mission. In fact, it was once a mission, though these days it stands across the street from an unholy row of Ripley’s and Guinness tourist operations. You can cover it in about two hours.

Yes, it’s the Alamo. And yes, it’s worth remembering ― and maybe some rethinking too.

This is where William Travis, David “Davy” Crockett, Jim Bowie and about 200 other rebels died fighting for Texas sovereignty against a Mexican force of perhaps 1,800 soldiers, perhaps 6,000. Ever since that day in 1836, the Alamo has been embraced as a symbol of doomed bravery.

The story won over Fess Parker, who starred in a ’50s Disney miniseries about Crockett, and John Wayne, who directed and starred in a movie version of the Alamo story in 1960. And it spoke to pop star Phil Collins, who grew up in England watching Parker on TV. He spent a fortune acquiring 200 artifacts of the battle and of Texas history, then last month handed them over to the state of Texas.

The Collins collection includes letters from Travis, a rifle of Crockett’s, a knife of Bowie’s and a sword that belonged to Mexican leader Antonio Lopez de Santa Anna. State officials hope to build a museum to show it all off, but no new building will displace the Alamo’s facade as an emblem of the West.

This made it a natural stop for Los Angeles Times photographer Mark Boster and me on our campaign to explore some of the West’s most enduring icons. We spent three fall days in San Antonio, sifting history and myth, nosing around mission ruins, roaming the River Walk and admiring landmarks that turn out, like the Alamo, to be old buildings in their second lives.

First stop was the remnants of the old Alamo compound, much of which was gobbled up by shops and streets in San Antonio’s early decades. Nowadays, the landmark, which is free to visit, is surrounded by urban San Antonio and dwarfed by the tall, slender Emily Morgan Hotel to the north and the low, rambling Menger Hotel to the south.

You begin with the Alamo’s focal point, the former church with the weathered facade that’s now known as the shrine of Texas liberty. It was built by Spanish missionaries and Coahuiltecan Indians in the 18th century as the chapel of the Mission San Antonio de Valero. But the mission didn’t last, so the roofless building was pressed into service as a garrison for Spanish troops, then Mexican troops and then, in 1836, rebels aiming to pry Texas from Mexico and establish a republic.

Inside the shrine, gentlemen are instructed to remove their hats. In dim light, visitors inspect a knife associated with Bowie, a vest that belonged to Crockett and a row of flags that honor the dead rebels. Many of them had recently arrived from Tennessee and elsewhere (including former Tennessee congressman Crockett); most expected to be paid for their services with big chunks of land; and many had not-so-heroic histories (including the slave-trading knife-fighter Bowie, who was sick in bed when the battle took place). But there’s no denying the extremity of their last chapter, holed up in the ruined mission compound for 13 days as enemy troops massed nearby.

Nowadays, the shrine has a solid roof over it, a gift shop next door (faux coonskin caps, $12.99) and a well-tended garden all around. But as you wander through the shrine, or linger by the neighboring long barrack building, it’s not hard to imagine the scene.

“This is where Texas begins,” I heard somebody say with an accent I couldn’t immediately place. It was Dennis Kozinski, who had come to town from his native Ukraine. He was sporting cowboy boots and a silver belt buckle ― but he was thinking about the Ukrainian troops, outnumbered along the Russian border in recent months.

“It’s like Ukraine,” he said of the Alamo battle. “Before this moment, they were not sure. But this moment, being against 5,000 Mexicans, they were sure. Being against all that, it brings them together.”

“Victory or death,” Travis, the rebels’ commander, wrote in a letter seeking reinforcements during the siege. But reinforcements never came, or at least not enough to make a difference. When Santa Anna’s troops charged on March 6 ― with orders to take no prisoners ― the rebels did what they could with cannons, muskets and swords, killing as many as 600 of the attackers. But it was over quickly.

By most accounts, every rebel fighter was killed that morning. But the recollections of surviving women, children, slaves and Mexican soldiers were hazy and often conflicting, leaving historians to debate who died when, where and how.

This much is clear, though: Six weeks later, revenge-seeking rebels prevailed in the Battle of San Jacinto, took Santa Anna prisoner and proclaimed Texas a republic. Nine years later, the U.S. annexed Texas. Twelve years later, in 1848, the U.S. won the Mexican-American War.

To see what San Antonio has been up to since then, just look around Alamo Plaza, where you’ll see stately buildings from the late 19th and early 20th centuries, some of them now occupied or neighbored by Ripley’s and Guinness.

Activists at www.alamoplazaproject.com would like to replace these businesses with a replica of the Alamo’s western wall, which once stood there. Richard Bruce Winders, historian and curator of the Alamo, told me the block “presents a sort of problem for the Alamo.” But, he continued, “this is America. Do we drive people out of buildings just because we want the buildings? I’m not comfortable with that.” (Earlier this year, the San Antonio City Council named a committee to wrestle with the issue.)

I sidestepped the sideshow businesses because I wanted more time with a San Antonio tourist attraction far bigger than I expected ― the River Walk.

Conceived in 1929 by architect Robert H.H. Hugman and completed (or so it seemed) in 1941, the River Walk was a simple idea: Put walkways along the banks of the San Antonio River and make them a thoroughfare for tourists.

It worked. Then the system got a boost in the 1960s, when San Antonio hosted HemisFair ’68. Further boosts followed, and the walkways now line 15 miles of the river. Scores of restaurants and hotels stand alongside the river, as do the city’s glittering new Tobin Center for the Performing Arts; the San Antonio Museum of Art (built in the 1980s on the site of the old Lone Star Brewery) and the restaurants and shops of the not-quite-completed Pearl (another brewery redevelopment project).

As many a conventioneer has discovered, you can spend three days meandering the River Walk and scarcely set foot on the grittier downtown streets where locals tread.

My plan was to rent a bike and pedal to the four other missions along the river within an easy ride of the Alamo ― but rain came. So we drove mission to mission, walking grounds maintained by the National Park Service and interiors where Catholic priests still say Mass.

If history had happened a bit differently, I thought, any one of these ruins might be a shrine to Texas liberty. The Alamo might be a working church or a brewery. Or part of Mexico.

Later that night, when I doubled back downtown and found the old Alamo shrine bathed in floodlights, backed by storm clouds, surrounded by rain puddles, it didn’t look so small after all.

By Christopher Reynolds

(Los Angeles Times)

(Tribune Content Agency)