Author reflects on myth vs. reality in the Alamo makeover
Novelist and historian Stephen Harrigan says the Alamo still has many hurdles to clear, but it is becoming a more engaging historic site that balances harsh realism with a traditional heroic narrative.
“The physical changes that have been taking place so far on the grounds have been accompanied by an intellectual redevelopment — an argument about what the Alamo is, what it represents, and whose stories it should tell,” Harrigan, author of “Gates of the Alamo” (2001) and other books on Texas and American history, summarized in the March edition of Texas Monthly.
Besides offering more indoor exhibit space and a quieter, pedestrian-friendly area, he suggested the Alamo revitalization project will help people better understand the site, a mission-fort that once covered about four acres.
“Most of the visitors who stand in front of the church think they’re looking at the Alamo, but they’re not,” the 74-year-old Harrigan wrote.
The article includes Harrigan’s
personal musings on the Alamo, including his first visit there in 1956. It chronicles the recent years of passionate debate over glass walls and a proposal to move the 56-foot Alamo Cenotaph among parts of the plan that eventually were tossed aside. He credits project leaders with removing the traffic noise from Alamo Plaza and steering the undertaking away from politics and controversy — whenever possible. Alamo officials are touting a focus on authenticity, with a new Alamo Collections Center set to open Friday and a 100,000square-foot museum and visitor center scheduled for a 2026 opening. Although some have raised questions about a Bowie knife and other items in the Phil Collins Texana Collection connected to specific historical fig
ures, “I haven’t yet encountered anyone who has serious concerns about the documents. And it’s the documents that give you the real history buzz,” Harrigan writes.
New commentary that Alamo docents have begun using in recent months to orient visitors is a “step up, broader and more complex than the blunt ‘we won’ narrative I had heard from Alamo guides in the past,” he writes. Updated materials touch on slavery and the Alamo’s origin as a Spanish-indigenous mission of the 1700s.
“The flare-up over the Alamo’s
redesign seemed to have subsided after the issue of moving or not moving the Cenotaph was settled and tempers cooled a bit. But it was only the latest skirmish in an inexhaustible war over identity and representation,” Harrigan writes.
Until it’s completed, he gives neither a rebuke nor a full endorsement of the Alamo project.
“When it comes to revamping our state’s most beloved, most fought-over secular shrine, the stakes are high, and the challenges are clear: somehow the Alamo will have to find a way to honor both its mythic past and its messy present,” Harrigan concludes.