Back to making a splash

San Antonio’s historic public swimming pools reopen — just in time to beat the heat

Rita Maria Contreras Avery, 70, has made a splash at San Antonio’s most historic swimming pools for decades.

When she was 6 years old, her sister Dolores taught her how to swim at the public pool at Woodlawn Lake Park, which has complemented the West Side lake for more than 90 years. Avery spent all day in those chlorine-blue waters well into junior high.

Then in high school, she soaked up the rays for hours on end at the sprawling pool in San Pedro Springs Park. The city’s first municipal pool, it is located in the nation’s second-oldest park. The former lake bedturned-tree-lined-oasis has been a highlight of the park’s halcyon surroundings for almost a century.

Avery last swam morning laps at the Woodlawn pool in 2019; the pandemic closed public pools the following summer. Now with vaccinations on the rise and restrictions loosening, about a half-dozen city pools have opened with some restrictions, and Avery hopes to get back to those familiar waters — not just to keep cool this summer but also to appreciate how much those memorable swimming holes remain relatively frozen in time.

“That makes it special, because a swimming pool sitting in the middle of asphalt is no fun,” said Avery, who also paints and works in business insurance. “But in the middle of a green space, with palm trees and bougainvilleas … that just makes it

more attractive, more restful to the eyes. Just a more beautiful space.”

When it comes to dipping into history, it’s hard not to plunge into the pools at Woodlawn and San Pedro Springs parks.

“There’s still that excitement about going to these historic pools,” said Connie Swann, marketing manager for San Antonio Parks and Recreation. “It’s really inspiring to know that the stewardship of these places continues.”

Like many families in San Antonio, Swann said hers is looking forward to getting back into the swim of things.

San Pedro Springs’ history goes back to 1709, when Fathers Antonio de San Buenaventura de Olivares and Isidro Félix de Espinosa first named the waters. The area around the springs has been used as a park, with pavilions and other amenities, since the mid-1800s; the city took over management of the park in 1890.

The idea for a swimming pool came up in 1913, when Mayor Clinton Brown suggested creating swimming holes in the San Antonio River with artesian flow, according to the Edwards Aquifer Website. A decade later, the city opened its first municipal pool at San Pedro Springs as part of its annual San Jacinto festival.

The man-made waters at Woodlawn Lake Park date to the late 1880s with the creation of the lake itself.

Developers of the site, originally a residential subdivision called West End, built a dirt dam across Alazan Creek to create “the finest artificial lake in the south,” according to the city of San Antonio website.

West End and its lake were deeded to San Antonio in 1918. The lake was named Woodlawn Lake, and a swimming pool followed in 1925.

A July 26, 1925, San Antonio Light article that Swann uncovered heralded the opening of the 250-foot-long pool as “second in size only to San Pedro Springs,” which she said is still the case.

The article noted the original Woodlawn pool had two dozen concrete columns topped with electric lights, “making the pool available for night bathing.” The columns are gone, but the pool still caters now as then to “toddlers in mothers’ arms, youngsters of both sexes, girls and boys and young men and maidens,

grown men and women.”

Avery has seen plenty of those in and out of the water.

For the past 35 years, she’s lived just two blocks away from her old splashing grounds at the Woodlawn pool.

Long ago, the Woodlawn pool also had a snack bar with pipinghot popcorn and hot dogs,

Avery said, the perfect pick-meup after all those trips to the diving boards. The San Pedro

pool also had a high diving board with a long line of kids, she said.

Those boards and bites are history, too. Otherwise, the San Pedro and Woodlawn pools look pretty much the same as they did when they first opened in the 1920s.

Swann said the city hopes to open additional park pools as more lifeguards become available. In the meantime,

Woodlawn will bring back free swimming lessons, just like the ones her son Leo Duarte took in 2019 when he was 11 years old.

Perhaps Leo will return the favor. Swann said she suggested he could be a lifeguard at the Woodlawn pool one day. He said he’ll think about it.

Meanwhile, Avery will have to sit out of the fun at Woodlawn Lake a little while longer because of a recent ankle injury.

But just the return of all the splashes and laughter at the nearby pool take her back to those endless summers in those timeless waters.

“I cannot imagine a childhood without swimming all the time,” she said. “It’s too hot in San Antonio. What else are you going to do?”

Lisa Krantz / Staff photographer Krystal and Jaime Hernandez introduce their grandsons, Zyaire Tatum, 2 months, Esaiah Tatum, 1, to the Woodlawn Lake Park Pool last week.

Courtesy photo Swimmers enjoy a dip in the pool at San Pedro Springs Park. Opened in 1923, it was the first municipal pool in the city.

Lisa Krantz / Staff photographer Samuel Torres, 12, flips into the Woodlawn Lake Park Pool last week. San Antonians have been cooling off in the pool since 1925.

University of Texas at San Antonio Special Collections The swimming pool at San Pedro Springs Park is seen circa 1927-1931. The pool hasn’t changed much in the decades since.