This article is an adaptation of our weekly Travel newsletter that was originally sent out on June 4, 2021. Want this in your inbox? Sign up here.
By George Stone, TRAVEL Executive Editor
Texas is reconsidering the conventional narrative of the Alamo (pictured above), which ladled myths around the white slaveholders who resisted Mexico. Guess what? The truth is controversial.
Travelers, drawn as we are to ancient and important places, often stumble into historical quagmires rife with competing narratives of exactly what happened and why. I am sure every traveler has at one point thought: “If this is history, I want to know who wrote it.”
Our story on the Alamo’s contested and convoluted historical narrative digs into how a deadly 1836 conflict is memorialized and why it matters today.
“A complex argument of facts versus fiction, right versus wrong, and what the battle was even about hasn’t let up since,” writes Nat Geo’s Jenn Barger. “Now, an ambitious plan to restore and recalibrate the UNESCO World Heritage Site has spurred a new battle over how to remember the Alamo.”
There’s a historical origin to Barger’s article: She began researching it decades ago, when she was growing up in San Antonio (and referred to the 18th-century Spanish mission as “the ‘Mo”).
“It's hard to explain to an outsider how central the Alamo is to San Antonio life. The legend of the battle, which helped Texas gain freedom from Mexico, that iconic humped shape of the building, and the fact that everything in my hometown is this two-step between Texan and Latino culture.” (Pictured below, Henry McArdle’s oversized 1905 oil painting of the battle.)
The site’s history was complicated long before rock star Phil Collins—who had amassed what is reputed to be the world’s most extensive collection of Alamo artifacts—donated his treasures (including what is supposedly Davy Crockett’s shot pouch) to a proposed on-site museum.
For Barger, reporting the story became a saga of its own. “I slipped down a rattlesnake hole of politics, history, and wacky lore. It made me look at everything in a new light,” she says. “I hope this ambitious new plan at the Alamo makes the place more interesting—and also more truthful about why both Mexicans and Texans were willing to die here. The Lone Star State loves a tall tale, but this is no Arthurian legend.”
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YOUR INSTAGRAM OF THE DAY
Commute in peace: Tranquil foot trails like this (pictured above) are main routes connecting rural villages on the Mentawai islands in Indonesia, says photographer John Barton. “Who knows, during peak hours, you might even cross paths with someone,” says Barton. About 70 islands and islets make up the Mentawai chain, off the west coast of Sumatra.
In the neighborhood: See the ‘rebel Vespa riders’ of Indonesia
TODAY IN A MINUTE
Opening up: Traveling to Europe? The European Union’s digital green certificate is now operational, ahead of schedule, the New York Times reports. The document allows travelers who have been vaccinated against the coronavirus, recovered from it, or who have tested negative to travel freely. The European Commission is working with the U.S. on how to verify the status of American visitors.
No rush: The 5,525-mile border between the U.S. and Canada has been closed to non-essential travel since March 2020. But prime minister Justin Trudeau says he won’t open the borders before at least 75 percent of Canadians have had their first dose of the COVID-19 vaccine, Forbes reports. “We don’t want to have to close again, tighten up again because there’s another wave,” Trudeau says.
A sanctuary: Gay people once sought out gay restaurants as places where they knew they belonged. As the LGBTQ population finds more acceptance in more settings, many gay restaurants are going the way of dinosaurs, the New York Times reports. Others, however, are thriving as community refuges during a time of recovery.
A culinary trip: Like most of us over the last year, Douglas Heye found himself with more time at home, unable to travel or dine at a restaurant. He missed traveling to places near and far, so he decided to up his game in the kitchen, transporting himself through dishes. “Roman pastas paired with Morricone and Pavarotti, Colombian ajiaco and Shakira teleported me to those places for a night,” he writes in the Washington Post.
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THE BIG TAKEAWAY
Eliminating ‘drowning machines’ to make rivers safer: From Colorado to Indiana to Maine, municipal authorities and environmentalists are undertaking projects to map and remove low-head dams. Difficult to see from upstream, these dams have drowned hundreds of people across the country in the past decade, Nat Geo reports. (Above, a young man fishes at a low-head dam near Grafton, Wisconsin.)
IN A FEW WORDS
The destruction, the hate, the racism, all that stuff in the past, it prevented us from reaching our potential for all of these decades. There are so many cool things that are happening in the city now, especially from Black artists, creatives, and entrepreneurs. I wouldn’t be here if I felt like there was no hope.
Venita Cooper, Sneaker shop and art gallery founder in Tulsa
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ONE LAST GLIMPSE
Shooting for the stars: Rugged coastline, ruined castles, and rocket launches? The U.K. Space Agency and its British partners are looking to fly spaceships, reviving an area in economic decline and adding “rocket-spotting” to Scotland’s tourism profile, Nat Geo reports. But the proposed site on peatland, raises concerns about disrupting the fragile and biodiverse environment. (U.K. aerospace company Orbex’s Prime rocket, pictured above, is designed to deliver satellites into orbit.)
This newsletter has been curated and edited by Monica Williams and David Beard, and Jen Tse selected the photographs. Have an idea, a link, a “rocket-spotting” story to share? We'd love to hear from you at david.beard@natgeo.com. And thanks for reading!
