The Ben Milam Cypress

By local tradition, the shot that killed Ben Milam came out of this tree. On the night of 7 December 1835, during the Siege of Bexar, a marksman under General Cos is said to have fired from the branches of this bald cypress as the Texian commander crossed the courtyard of the Veramendi Palace to confer with another officer. Milam died there. The palace came down around 1910. The cypress is still standing, 762 centimetres round and about 27 metres tall, and put at over two hundred years old, which means it was certainly already here that night. Whether a rifleman was ever actually up there is not settled and probably never will be; the story is older than anyone alive to check it. What is not in doubt is that this trunk was on this bank while San Antonio changed hands, and that it has stood through everything the city did to the river afterwards, including turning it into a walkway lined with restaurants. Today it grows behind a downtown hotel on the busiest stretch of the River Walk, and the barges narrating the river's history pass underneath it all day long. The crews who look after the walk call it Geronimo. It is free to see from the path or from the water. Our pin marks a stretch of the east bank rather than the trunk, so look for the biggest cypress between the Commerce Street and Houston Street bridges.