Make it YOUR Mission

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Completion: 2020

Working alongside members of the National Park Service Interpretation team, the Community Outreach Intern joins the mission of promoting the Park to San Antonio and the surrounding communities. In addition to assisting with conducting curriculum-based education programming and interpretation duties, the intern assists with appearances at special events, including Fiesta and community parades and Farm Day.

Completion: 2012

This significant and necessary upgrade replaced rotted wooden posts and rails around and throughout the grist mill at Mission San José. Using the faux bois technique (concrete fabricated to look like wood), San Antonio artist Carlos Cortés and his team of artists created posts and top-rails that provide more enduring strength, stability and sustainability. New faux bois security and safety rails now also allow safe access to the stairway that leads to the lower horizontal wheel. The beauty of the faux bois work is that it remains inconspicuous within the historic setting. A private donor provided partial funding for the project and the Mission Heritage Partners funded the final amount needed to complete the project.

Completion: 2007

Long before selfies were popular, visitors to the San Antonio Missions took plenty of pictures of themselves and their traveling companions at various sites throughout the Park. The Mission Heritage Partners solicited funds for prominent, permanent signs at each of the four Missions in the San Antonio Missions National Historical Park. Since being installed, these stately stone and cement monuments, funded by AT&T, have served as a landmark entry point at each Mission, and have appeared in countless family photos.

Completion: 2001

Over the years, the 18th century grist mill at Mission San José had fallen into disrepair. Rusted, non-functioning mechanisms reduced the mainstay of the community to a useless structure. Because the mill provides an important look at the ingenuity and food production that took place at the mission, the Mission Heritage Partners raised funds to return it to full operation in 1995. Garnering a mix of grants and local donations, the group was able to have the grist mill mechanisms replaced, as well as to restore the mill race leading water to the underground wheel.

Completion: 1996

In the early 1990s, several members of the board of directors and the executive director of Mission Heritage Partners made an in-person plea to several United States Congressmen requesting funds for a Visitor Center at the Park. Their efforts were successful and the Visitor Center at Mission San José was built in in 1996. It now serves as a busy gathering spot, complete with a museum, gift shop, conference room and theater that airs a documentary about the men and women who built the Missions in San Antonio so strategically set along the San Antonio River.

Completion: 2020

Art has been part of the history of national parks since the 1870’s when Hudson River School painters captured majestic Western landscapes. Today, the sights and sounds in national parks continue to inspire artists who participate in the Artist-in-Residence programs, including the program at the San Antonio Missions National Historical Park.

Thanks to you, Mission Heritage Partners has helped bring art to the Park since 2017, funding such projects as the Michael Nye’s Four Voices Exhibit at Mission Concepcion and the 2018 Artist-in-Residence project with James, Jenny and Emma Tarpley. In the 2019 exhibit, Portals of a People, Sabra Booth utilized printmaking skills to create light works in the Spanish Quarters exhibits area and granary in Mission San José. The prints celebrated plants that were essential to the indigenous people’s lives, in terms of diet, spirituality, and personal expression.

We look forward to announcing the 2020 Artist in Residence in January 2020.

Completion: 2020

Funding for this important 8-week apprenticeship program, administered in conjunction with the American Youthworks Environmental Corps, helps young adults learn a valuable skill, and assists the Park masons who are tasked with preservation of the more than 250,000 square feet of masonry surfaces.

Since the program was initiated in 2008, it has grown to become an integral element in the workflow of the professional masons, allowing them time and resources to meet project goals and milestones. Some of the projects these interns have worked on are the repointing flagstone floors, rebuilding 18th century steps and stoops, and installing several porches and arbors.

Completion: 2020

More than 90 percent of native prairie vegetation has been lost to development in the United States. The National  Park Service Staff at the San Antonio Missions National Park has been working on an on-going prairie restoration project at Rancho de las Cabras near Floresville and southeast of the old San Juan Dam site in San Antonio. Mission Heritage Partners is proud to support their efforts to re-create a native mixed-grass prairie vegetation at these two sites.

Completion: 2020

By underwriting this contract, Mission Heritage Partners ensures National Park Service employees are available to take on other grounds-keeping duties and projects. The contracted professionals maintain 25 manicured landscape beds throughout the San Antonio Missions National Historical Park, including those at the Visitor Center, Grist Mill and Discovery Center at Mission San José, the Visitor Contact Station at Mission Concepción, the parking lot at Mission Espada and the roadway portal to Mission San Juan. The group also provides funding for a contractor to maintain the fields at Rancho de las Cabras.

Completion: 2020

Each year the Mission Heritage Partners provides funds that offset the cost of transportation for Title One and equivalent schools to take field trips to the San Antonio Missions National Historical Park. The targeted schools are located within 40 miles of San Antonio.

• US – ICOMOS Intern
• Architectural Technician Intern
• Archeology Technician Intern
• Genetic Genealogy Intern
• Museum Technician Intern
• Community Engagement and Interpretation Intern
• Masonry Apprentice Program
• Volunteers-in-Parks Program Support
• Art in the Park Program
• Community Outreach & Special Programs
• Rancho de las Cabras Archaeology Field School Report
• Native Prairie Restoration at Mission San Juan Dam Property
• Support for the Farm at Mission San Juan Capistrano
• Volunteer Village Pavilion and Security Enhancements
• Information Rack Card Printing and Distribution (throughout Texas)
• Emergency Tree Work
• Feral Hog Trapping
• Large Mammal Collagen Sturdy
• Ground Penetrating Radar Study
• Professional Landscape Maintenance
• Gunflint Inventory

Completion: 2020

The Volunteers-In-Parks (VIP) Program supplies the San Antonio Missions with professional docents who provide important visitor services at the four Spanish Missions. The goal is for VIPs to offer timely details and information about the Park’s resources upon the visitors’ arrival. The Mission Heritage Partners provides a variety of funds to support the VIP Program, underwriting background checks, purchasing uniforms and nametags, providing training, recognition events and supplies the volunteers need during their activities. Volunteers at the Park contribute in excess of 10,600 hours annually, the equivalent of more than five permanent, full-time employees.

Completion: 2015

Mission Heritage Partners provided the lead writer, in-kind staff and volunteer hours and much more in support of the nomination of the San Antonio Missions as a UNESCO World Heritage Site. The eight-year project also required funds for expert nomination process consultants, detailed research, writing and editing, and the development of the final publication printed for submission. The efforts were successful. The four San Antonio Missions, along with Mission Valero/The Alamo, were designated as a UNESCO World Heritage Site on July 5, 2015.