Adina De Zavala

Adina Emilia De Zavala was born in Harris County in 1861 and was the granddaughter of Lorenzo de Zavala, the first vice president of the Republic of Texas. As a San Antonio schoolteacher and historian she organized preservation-minded women in the 1880s and later helped form the De Zavala Chapter of the Daughters of the Republic of Texas. In 1892 she asked the commercial owners of the Alamo Long Barrack not to sell the property without first notifying her, beginning a long campaign to keep the structure from redevelopment.

De Zavala later worked with Clara Driscoll, whose wealth made the 1903 purchase possible after De Zavala and other DRT members raised part of the required money. Their partnership fractured over what the Alamo grounds should become: De Zavala prioritized preserving the Long Barrack and the broader mission footprint, while Driscoll favored a different memorial treatment. In February 1908 De Zavala barricaded herself inside the Long Barrack for three days during the dispute. She continued preservation work for decades, organized the Texas Historical and Landmarks Association, wrote about the Alamo and other missions, and promoted preservation of the Spanish Governor's Palace and other sites.

De Zavala's significance extends beyond the dramatic 1908 barricade. She helped make historic preservation an organized civic practice in San Antonio decades before modern preservation law, and she repeatedly used clubs, research, markers, writing and political pressure to keep old structures from disappearing.

The Alamo story is most accurate when De Zavala and Driscoll are treated together. De Zavala supplied the early organizing, persistence and preservation vision; Driscoll supplied crucial financing and political leverage. Their later conflict demonstrates that preservationists could agree that a place mattered while sharply disagreeing about what should be saved and how history should be presented.