"The San Antonio River, so graceful in its flow through our community is my personal symbol of the tie that binds us all together."
Lila Cockrell, 2018
Mayor Lila Cockrell loved San Antonio, with an especially deep affection for its beautiful river. She was instrumental in revitalizing the 13-mile waterway and was a key figure in its redesign as an extraordinary linear park that stretches from Brackenridge Park through downtown to the city's southernmost mission, San Francisco de Espada, built in 1690. She was a champion for the creation of this modern Lock and Dam, enabling colorful barges to travel up-river.
The route passes two former 19th century breweries that were transformed into the San Antonio Museum of Art and The Pearl. During the revitalization of this segment of the river, a cache of old beer bottles was discovered---from the late 1880s through the 1970s. The breweries dumped them in the river!
Elected mayor of San Antonio in 1975, Lila Cockrell was the first woman mayor of a major U.S. city. She served four terms (1975-1979; 1989-1991) and many of her accomplishments focused on pioneering stewardship of the environment. She was known for her steady, calm leadership and guided San Antonio toward unprecedented protection of its water supply and committed the city to diversified reserves of energy for power generation.
After she left city government, she continued to blaze trails for the environment. As Executive Director of the San Antonio Parks Foundation, she helped design what eventually became a $62 million project to restore the dilapidated Sunken Gardens, built in an old rock quarry in Brackenridge Park in 1917. The modern transformation includes waterfalls, ponds filled with koi fish, lush plants and flowers, and a renovated historic Japanese Tea House.
Today these gardens display a spectacular celebration of the natural environment, as does the restored natural habitat of the southern reach of the San Antonio River. In concert with the rest of the famous RiverWalk, they attract millions of visitors to San Antonio each year. People come from all over the United States and the world; they range from regular folks like us to royalty like Queen Elizabeth and Prince Charles, who were hosted by The Honorable Lila Cockrell in 1990, and King Felipe VI and Queen Letizia of Spain who visited in 2018, to rapper Jack Harlow and Metallica.
Before she died in 2019, Lila Cockrell published her autobiography, Love Deeper than a River (Trinity University Press). It highlights her life as a civic leader and trailblazer for the environment, and shares memories of cruising this extraordinary waterway over the years on the colorful barge which carries her name:
"When the king and queen of Spain visited San Antonio in 2018, they took a ride on the MS. LILA barge and fell in love with our multi-cultural city and its wondrous river….just as I did so many years ago." LBC, 2019