SAN ANTONIO ARSENAL. The San Antonio Arsenal was founded in 1859 to furnish arms and munitions to the frontier forts in Texas. During the Civil War the twenty-one-acre reservation was occupied by Confederate forces and the supplies were used for the Confederate war effort. After the war the United States Army once again took possession of the complex, and over the course of the next half century it was gradually enlarged; by the end of World War I the arsenal comprised thirty-eight buildings. During both world wars it served as a major supply depot. The volume of operations reached its height during World War II, when it shipped more than 337,000,000 pounds of ammunition. The arsenal was closed in 1949, although its buildings continued to be used as federal government offices. In 1972 two acres and three buildings were transferred to the city of San Antonio to be used as parkland under the Department of the Interior's Bureau of Outdoor Recreation. Several of the remaining buildings were torn down. In 1985 H-E-B bought the remaining ten acres on the bank of the San Antonio River and remodeled the existing structures for the grocery company's corporate headquarters.
BIBLIOGRAPHY: Marker Files, Texas Historical Commission, Austin.
