The River Walk is not, despite the postcards, a single walk. It is a system of stone-paved paths along both banks of the San Antonio River, twenty feet below the surrounding street grid, connected by a few dozen flights of stairs and three pedestrian-only bridges. The downtown loop — sometimes called the Big Bend, sometimes just “the loop” — is about a mile and a half. It was designed in 1939 by an architect named Robert Hugman, who imagined it as a kind of subterranean Venice for a city that did not yet have air conditioning. He laid it out for shade.
The geometry holds up. The river sits in a cut walled by limestone and old hotels, the bald cypresses on the bank are now eighty feet tall, and the water itself absorbs heat slowly. We have measured an eight-degree differential between the Commerce Street bridge and the path below it on a 100° afternoon. The cover is most continuous on the eastern arc — from the Tower Life Building south to the King William end. The western arc, past the convention center, opens up where the new hotels broke the canopy line.
A few practical notes. The path is busiest between 11 and 3, when the boat tours overlap with the lunch crowd at the chain restaurants. We walk it before 10 or after 4. The mosaic tile is slick after a rain. And the riverboats’ wake throws spray onto the lower steps — wear shoes you don’t mind getting damp.