Long before its famous 1836 battle, the Alamo functioned for decades as a working Spanish colonial mission compound. Founded in 1718 by Franciscan friars, San Antonio de Valero operated as a self-sustaining religious and economic community where Native converts lived, farmed irrigated fields fed by the acequia system, raised livestock, and worked in weaving, blacksmithing, and other trades under Franciscan supervision, with a stone convento, granaries, and workshops supporting daily life. After the mission was secularized in 1793 and its lands redistributed, the compound was repurposed for military use, garrisoning a Spanish cavalry unit, the Second Flying Company of San Carlos de Parras, whose soldiers gave the site the nickname Alamo. The complex also served as San Antonio's first hospital in the early 1800s and, by the 1830s, functioned as a fortified garrison and supply depot for Texian and Mexican forces during the revolutionary period, its walls and buildings adapted for defense rather than worship. After the war, the U.S. Army continued to use the site as a quartermaster supply depot until 1878. Today the Alamo operates as a state historic site, a revered shrine, and one of Texas's most visited tourist destinations, with the restored church and the Long Barracks museum preserving the mission-era and military history of the compound for millions of annual visitors.