Posted on October 21, 2026 by Nick Ward
UT San Antonio professor Jessica Nowlin leads the Seed of Texas project, an interactive digital atlas utilizing GIS technology to map over 12,000 years of Bexar County history.
Bexar County holds a vast wealth of history spanning over 12,000 years, from pre-colonial Indigenous peoples to westward expansion to the modern era. The sheer volume of archival material can be daunting to try to make heads or tails of, with archive after archive of aging tomes, religious documentation, census data, county health records, and so much more that few have access to. The Seed of Texas project, found at heritage.bexar.org, takes a dynamic, interactive approach to curating these records in a relevant and visually engaging way by creating highly interactive and informative modules for access by teachers and the public alike.
Department of History Professor Emeritus Jack Reynolds originated the idea in 2016 for the County’s tricentennial and has received over half a million dollars in funding to complete its goals. He wanted to showcase Bexar County history using GIS technology, which utilizes software to map and analyze location-based data for academic and scientific research. Dual-appointed Department of Philosophy & Classics and Department of History professor Jessica Nowlin was brought on board for her expertise in using GIS in an archaeological context. The team started with a pilot program looking at the early parts of Bexar County’s history, breaking the timeline into specific phases. Reynolds handled the first two phases covering Indigenous peoples before European expansion and the successive rule of the Spanish, Mexicans, Texans, and US until the arrival of the railroad in 1877. Nowlin oversees the later two phases, guiding the timeline from 1877 to the modern era.
“Bexar County is just so rich in historical material. There’s so much data and amazing history across different groups and peoples who still live and reside within Bexar County,” said Nowlin. “When I started getting involved in the project, I was mostly brought on to do the GIS work, and I saw this wealth of information that documented San Antonio and Bexar County’s history and was trying to find ways to make it more accessible for everyone.”
Using the project’s website, users can visually track all sorts of data compiled by the team. For example, one could track the arrival of the railroad in 1877. Another map illustrates the terrain, and the specific route travelers took on a stagecoach from San Antonio to Austin to Houston, with the module even detailing the financial costs of stagecoach travel. Once the train arrives, the project uses census data to demonstrate the resulting population and industrial boom. Charts display how occupations shifted alongside the emerging brewing industry. The connections within the data are near endless and provide an insightful deep dive into how communities evolved in the San Antonio region.
A Collaborative Effort
Building a digital atlas of this magnitude requires an extensive collaboration of experts passionate about local history. The Seed of Texas project relies on guidance from a dedicated Advisory Committee that identifies key themes to develop and offers historical expertise. The committee features scholars from UT San Antonio, including Daniel Gelo, Mario Salas, Gabriela Gonzalez, Melissa Gohlke, and John Philip Santos. They are joined by Texas A&M University’s Alston V. Thoms, Amy Porter, Philis Barragan Goetz, and Lawrence Knight. Additional academic guidance comes from Texas State University’s Jesús F. de la Teja and Louie Dean Valencia-García, St. Mary’s University’s Gerald Poyo and Lindsey Wieck, UT Permian Basin’s Ana Luisa Martinez-Catsam, the University of Washington’s Rebecca Walter, and Pomona College’s Char Miller.
For the upcoming work on Phase IV, the Seed of Texas is working with a network of community organizations and institutions to actively support the project. The platform will integrate resources from the San Antonio African American Community Archive and Museum (SAAACAM) alongside materials from the American Indians of Texas at the Spanish Colonial Missions (AITSCM). Additional archival data comes from the Bexar County Spanish Archives and the City of San Antonio’s Office of Historic Preservation. Technical and academic collaboration extends to ESRI and the University of the Incarnate Word. The UTSA John Peace Library’s Special Collections, with assistance from librarian Thomas F. Shelton and Archivist Melissa Gohlke, provided access to hard-to-find historical records.
Several students have also played an active role in building the Seed of Texas platform. Graduate students Gabe Rios and Jennifer Campbell collaborated with UT San Antonio faculty member Andria Crosson to create interactive lesson plans for the project. Sarah Vegerano and Daniel Max Orta authored specific historical modules. Orta began his work on the project as an undergraduate medical humanities major before transitioning into a data science master’s program after discovering his passion for data and its visualization. Jessica K. Ceeko and Thomas Holdsworth assisted in the research and design of the early modules in the project, as did Mary F. Ledbetter. Sophia Mendez, a current history master’s student, is digitizing records concerning the 1960s urban renewal program and the HemisFair site. Additionally, Jeromey Franklin contributed to the project during his time as an undergraduate student.
Mapping Public Health
Archival data on the Seed of Texas helps paint a vibrant picture of public health across Bexar County’s history. Maps reveal geographic patterns of disease and unequal resource allocation spanning decades. Martinez-Catsam’s work on the Public Health Movement module pinpointed the historical location of the infirmaries and clinics. Mortality rates by area help indicate commonalities in medical concerns impacting specific neighborhoods. The team even discovered creative civic interventions, such as the installation of bat coops designed to combat malaria.
A review of San Antonio death records from 1881 to 1901 uncovered localized epidemics of cholera, smallpox, tuberculosis, and malaria. GIS mapping showed the outbreaks of tuberculosis primarily affected local residents rather than travelers or immigrants fueling the spread of infection. Data indicated that tuberculosis cases clustered heavily in Wards Two and Three on the city’s West Side. Records indicate that community advocates like Carmelo Tranchese fought back; he recognized the transmission trends and organized local residents to push for improved housing standards to slow the transmission rate. With access to visual mapping and consolidated data, response time could have improved and potentially saved lives.
Presenting historical health inequities visually allows modern researchers to identify geographic patterns in healthcare access. The same geographic areas affected by early infectious diseases experience similar modern challenges with diabetes and heart disease, signaling how they may disproportionately impact different areas of the city. Curating and presenting this data may help influence public policy in the future, and visualizing the data gives civic leaders a better workflow for improving resource distribution.
“I would hope that public policy officials could see the ways in which their actions have helped communities in the past by looking at patterns in these data sets and then use this information for affecting change today,” said Nowlin.
Looking Forward
Phase four of the project secured funding last December. The team plans to complete the final modules by January 2029. These modules will reach into contemporary data sets and should provide insights into what sort of information we gather today and potentially areas we could improve upon in collection for the future.
During this final phase of the project, Nowlin wants to push the boundaries of digital history by bringing in students from other academic colleges. She plans to use this data to generate 3D models of historic homes, allowing users to virtually walk through historic neighborhoods. Bringing in future partners in the College of AI, Cyber and Computing and the Klesse College of Engineering and Integrated Design’s Architecture program could elevate the Seed of Texas’s visual capabilities.
For students looking to be involved, they can directly impact how San Antonio remembers its past. Nowlin is set to teach a Historical GIS course in the spring of 2027. Enrolled students will learn advanced mapping techniques while actively building new content for the Seed of Texas platform. For more information, contact Jessica Nowlin at jessica.nowlin@utsa.edu . Visit the Seed of Texas project at heritage.bexar.org
— Nick Ward
