Located north of downtown San Antonio and completed in 2009, this 3.5-mile-long linear urban park is an extension of the River Walk, providing pedestrian access to several points of interest, including the Witte Museum, the San Antonio Zoo, Brackenridge Park, the Pearl, and the San Antonio Museum of Art. The park is part of the Mission Reach Ecosystem Restoration and Recreation Project, aimed at restoring the San Antonio River to a thriving ecosystem while enhancing the city’s evolving urban fabric.
The Museum Reach is divided into two segments. The Urban Segment, approximately 1.3 miles in length, runs between Lexington Avenue and Josephine Street and includes biking and hiking trails with planting beds filled with a wide variety of native plants, including ornamental grasses, roses, hibiscus, broadleef arrowheads, desert willows, live oaks, sycamores, cypresses, and pecans. There are also pedestrian overlooks, boat landings, water features, pocket parks, and a lock and dam near Brooklyn Avenue that extends travel by river taxi from the River Walk. The trails, often abutted by terraced plantings beds that trace the course of the river, continue through the 2.25-mile-long Park Segment, which stretches from Josephine Street to Hildebrand Avenue. The San Antonio River Foundation raised private funds for the creation of fifteen permanent art installations. Among them are Donald Lipski’s F.I.S.H., a school of 25 hand-painted, seven-foot-long sunfish suspended from the I-35 overpass near Camden Street, and the three-story Grotto designed by third-generation faux bois artist Carlos Cortés, which resembles a real grotto with waterfalls, twisting passageways, and realistic stalactites and stalagmites.
