San Antonio is perhaps best known for being the location of the Alamo, but it’s so much more than that. This thriving city in the heart of Texas has its own unique culture and a ton of great things to do and experience. That’s a San Antonio fact!
San Antonio has its own proud vibe, as well as slang (directions are often given based on whether the target destination is “inside or outside the loop”). Of course, San Antonio has its famous River Walk, which is a great place to enjoy a nice meal or stroll with a loved one, but many other fun happenings abound in this city in south-central Texas.
You can find out about some interesting San Antonio facts, as well as San Antonio secrets in our list below.
34 San Antonio facts from the fun to the creepy
Here’s a list of fun facts about San Antonio. Think you know everything there is to know about San Antonio? Or, are you new and want to get the lay of the land? Test your knowledge against this list.
1. “Countdown City” is the nickname of Antonio, TX, because of its main area code of 210, but Orlando, FL, can also claim the name due to the area code 321. However, if you are a stickler about it, San Antonio got their area code first in the early ’90s and 210 actually counts down to zero instead of just one, so San Antonio wins!
2. You might also hear San Antonio called the “Deuce Dime” based on that same area code.
3. The term “O’Niner” refers to residents of the exclusive 78209 ZIP Code that includes the upscale neighborhood of Alamo Heights. You can find a great apartment for rent in San Antonio there or check out these other great places to live in San Antonio.
4. San Antonio is the oldest city in Texas and celebrated its 300th anniversary on May 1, 2018.
5. Dallas was more well-known as the second-biggest big city in Texas (thanks to that old TV show named “Dallas”), but San Antonio is actually the second-largest city in Texas after Houston with almost 1.5 million residents.
6. San Antonio surpassed Dallas as the second biggest city in Texas after the 2010 census count. Dallas is now the third-largest city in Texas followed by Austin, with Fort Worth closing in at fifth place.
7. Another San Antonio fact is it’s also the second-largest city in the south and the seventh-largest city in the United States.
8. Texans love their homegrown fast food joint, Whataburger, based in San Antonio. Yet, some locals pronounced it “waterburger” when they were kids and still can’t break the habit as adults.
9. Another food favorite in San Antonio: barbacoa and Big Red.
10. For many San Antonio locals, roads paralleling highways are access roads, not a feeder or frontage road. (In Austin, just up I-35, you’re likely to hear them called frontage roads.)
11. If you’ve lived in San Antonio for a while, you probably don’t call it “San Antone.”
12. If you run across a group of women hiking in San Antonio without shirts on, don’t ogle. A local hiking group, Hiking Heroes, organized such a hike in October 2021 to raise funds for a local breast cancer nonprofit.
13. Grocery store chain H-E-B’s answer to Whole Foods, Central Market, is often called “Gucci-B,” a San Antonio fact. (To be fair, Central Market is a bit pricier than H-E-B but is a little cheaper than Whole Foods.)
14. San Antonio is home to the oldest miniature golf course in the United States at Cool Crest Miniature Golf. It was originally opened in 1929 and is now a historical landmark.
15. Before the San Antonio built River Walk, the area was a place to stay away from due to high crime and river rats. Yes, river rats. Since this is Texas, you can imagine their size.
16. Everything is bigger in Texas, and thus, you’ll find large spiders in San Antonio called Jumping Spiders. They’re hairy and have two large obvious eyes on the front (in addition to their other eyes) that watch you. Residents call them Jumping Spiders because they jump up to 25 feet! Fortunately, they aren’t after humans and if they bite you, it’s usually not serious.
17. Two spiders you should definitely steer clear from in San Antonio are the Black Widow Spider and Brown Recluse Spider. If either of these spiders bites you, do seek immediate medical attention.
18. If that weren’t scary enough, San Antonio has three species of scorpion: Striped Bark Scorpions, Giant Hairy Scorpions and Stripetail Scorpions. None of their venoms are lethal (except for rare cases of allergy), but they can hurt like hades. Seek medical attention if the bite looks serious.
19. The biggest of these three scorpions is the Giant Hairy Scorpion, which can grow as large as 4 inches has dark hair all over (ugh).
20. Both scorpions and spiders like the Brown Recluse like to hide out in shoes. It’s a good habit and a San Antonio fact to shake your shoes out before you put them on.
21. Here’s a different kind of Texas creepy: There’s a place called “The Tracks” where it’s said if you put your car in neutral over the railroad tracks, ghost kids who died in a fatal bus crash in the 1930s or 1940s will push the car over for you. Some people use baby powder on the car to show the ghostly handprints of the spectral children as in one viral video.
22. Another apocryphal ghost story in San Antonio is the Donkey Lady. She haunts the “Donkey Lady Bridge” (the South Side Bridge, near Applewhite and Zarzamora Road). The bridge is close to where she suffered severe burns and disfigurement (making her look like a donkey) after either her husband or a malevolent stranger set fire to her house.
23. Let’s not forget the Alamo, which rumor has it is also haunted. It’s not just the Texan soldiers who died there in a stand-off with the Mexican army in 1836. The Alamo sits on an old cemetery active between 1724 and 1793, and there are almost 1,000 buried there.
24. In addition to experiencing other apparitions and ghostly sounds, such as footsteps and ethereal voices, many people to this day see a ghost guard who stands on the roof of one of the Alamo buildings, especially on rainy, cold evenings.
25. After the Alamo fell, General Santa Ana of Mexico tried to have the Alamo burned down so it would not become a shrine to the fallen soldiers. Each time the Mexicans went to try to destroy the building, ghostly specters, some with flaming swords in hand, allegedly scared off the would-be arsonists. Thus, ghosts are the reason why the Alamo still stands today.
26. Staff cared for two stray cats and buried them on-site with their own gravemarkers when they died. One cat was named Ruby and the other was called C.C.
27. The term “Alamo” actually means cottonwood in Spanish, named for the cottonwood tree where Spanish monks planned and decided to build the Mission San Antonio de Valero, the original name for the Alamo.
28. Spanish is the second-most spoken language in San Antonio, but with a diverse population, German, Polish and Czech are also popular languages in the region. More recently, Chinese and Vietnamese, as well as Hindi, displaced those.
29. San Antonio has its own Stonehenge! It’s 90 percent as high and 60 percent as wide as the original in England. Stonehenge II is in Ingram, northwest of downtown San Antonio.
30. While it’s kind of surprising that Texans didn’t make a bigger Stonehenge, they did make up for it with the World’s Biggest Cowboy Boots ever made, found towering outside the North Star Mall.
31. San Antonio is also home to the biggest Virgin Mary mosaic in the world, found at the Guadalupe Cultural Arts Center. Do you know those tall votive candles with pictures of Mother Mary you can get at the grocery store for a buck? (Well, maybe a buck-fifty these days.) This mosaic is a replica of such a candle on a grand scale.
32. Speaking of big, how could we forget Buc-ee’s, the favorite waystation of Texas travelers? New Braunfels (either a suburb or satellite city of San Antonio, depending on how you look at it) has the largest Buc-ee’s on the planet. This Buc-ee’s location is the world’s biggest convenience store. It contains a whopping 67,000 square feet of retail sales space, which could house 22 7-Elevens or 2 Whole Foods stores.
33. Once you’ve gotten some fudge and jerky at Buc-ee’s, stop by Barney Smith’s Toilet Seat Art Museum to gape and awe at this amazing collection of decorated toilet seats. Yes, San Antonio has a museum dedicated entirely to artsy toilet seats.
34. Pterodactyls in San Antonio? Nah, it’s actually (maybe) worse. People have been seeing a massive, reptilian bird flying around the city for decades, and it’s bigger than a pterodactyl — more of the size of a pteranodon with wingspans of 15-20 feet. Technically, the bird itself is a San Antonio rumor, not a San Antonio fact, but people do claim to see this strange bird.
Experience the city yourself with a San Antonio apartment
We’ve shared some San Antonio facts and a few San Antonio secrets that help to make this great city such a fascinating place. If you’re interested in living in “Countdown City,” you can find lots of great apartments for rent in San Antonio.
With spiders that jump 25 feet, massive reptilian birds possibly flying overhead and a whole host of other strange and delightful things, San Antonio is a fun, adventurous place to live and work.
