By Bess Carroll.
San Antonio Light newspaper, April 5, 1926, Monday.
A city without a sky!
How many San Antonians, basking in the sunshine, know that at their feet there is a metropolis of perpetual darkness?
A place of winding tunnels of dark caves and caverns; where the black waters of hidden lakes beat against the crystal walls of grottoes!
And the people of this city are beings made by the misty darkness, great, hairy bats and white moths and grinning skeletons of men. And perhaps, if the legends of this dark city are ture, the ghosts of black robed friars and painted Indians walk in its silent streets.
In Navarro School, where the little "muchachoes" of the ealy Mexican grandees of San Antonio learn their A.B.C's, there is a story inherited from wrinkled grandfathers, of the main (and perhaps the only) street of this underground city.
These small black-eyed children say that once upon a time, in the time" when mission bells brought the Indios to pray with the padres," there was a long, dark, secret tunnel that reached from the middle of the Alamo chapel to the bushes that lines San Pedro springs. In times of danger the padres used this passageway as an outlet of escape, or as a means of communication with friends outside. The opening to the tunnel was a square stone set in the middle of the chapel floor, and only those who knew its exact location could find this hidden gateway.
Charles M. Barnes, an early San Antonio historian, declares that seveal
skeletons of giant Indians, seven feet or more in height, and perfectly
preserved stone pottery, indicating a prehistoric race, were found many
years ago in a tunnel discovered by workmen who wre blasting rock in San
Pedro park. There are two known openings into unexplored tunnels near San
Pedro springs, and to prevent danger or disaster to little boys and exploring
parties, the main entrance has been sealed with a rock.
