The San Antonio Factory
The Big Building
The airship was built in secret in and under an old warehouse in San Antonio, Texas.
The warehouse was a substantial three-story brick and concrete utilitarian-looking building that had been expanded to create more space surrounding it. It was located in an industrial district adjacent to the San Antonio River. The entrance to the compound was hidden in a maze of small streets and alleys. Comings and goings were hardly noticed in the bustling area. The existing buildings were soon converted into a state-of-the-art factory and laboratory. It was stocked with the most advanced machines, tools, instruments, and inventions of the day.
After arriving inside the compound, one entered the building through a wood and iron door with an arched transom. Large, heavy doors at the dock accepted the parts and materials needed for the construction of the airship. Some notes mentioned a heavy, musky smell around the dock.
On the first floor, among rows of columns, were machine shops and storage areas. Parts, fabric, and materials were on shelving and in wooden crates and barrels. The interior building spaces were well-lit through clerestories, light wells, and skylights. The labs were on the second floor. Secret, of course. Offices were on the third floor.
Some of the architectural drawings found at the site showed parts of the structure were engineered brilliantly, but others seemed like a miracle that it didn’t collapse. This was a secret entrance to the factory. The door on the left with the white dot led to a stairway that took you down under the river. The larger doors to the right led to the freight elevator. A brute of a man named Wilcox guarded the entrances at all times. San Antonio had plentiful suppliers and fabricators. A neighboring building was a textile-chem factory that made the airship’s envelope of fabric-A, which was stretched over the metal airship frame. A gang of sewing machines and operators occupied the large sewing room. A fleet of fabric assembly tables on wheels was used so the workers didn’t have to work on the floor. The tables could be moved around the room like a puzzle to adjust to different tasks and the large size of the fabric.
Another nearby building was the famous Twittletop Foundry & Machine Works, which was connected by an abandoned drainage tunnel. Materials could be moved without suspicion.
We will upload some architecture and engineering drawings soon.The Big Cavern
Below this area of downtown San Antonio was a vast system of caverns and caves.
The airship was mostly built underground. It was an unbelievable feat, considering the airship was 900 feet long. The underground factory was so huge it could have been one of the great wonders of the world.
Many years ago, a college roommate of mine named Corrigan told me that huge caves had been dug under downtown San Antonio. Large caverns and small tunnels had been dug through limestone under the city for decades. They were tunnels for drainage, utilities, and smugglers.
One of the largest caverns in the system was a natural formation from a dried-up aquifer that fed the adjacent San Antonio River as it wandered through the downtown area.
We are still cataloging some drawings and photos and we will upload them soon.Paladin, with the help of a man named Digger, designed an excavation around the largest chamber and a spoke-work of crisscrossing tunnels. They carved out a vast space underground that would be so large that a 900-foot airship could be built. The construction above ground and the excavation began simultaneously.
Limestone, granite tailings and mud were loaded onto barges and deposited on the western bank of the San Antonio River at Mission San Jose. The berm protected the mission from floods for many years until the berm was swept away.
Some excavation dregs were put into some of the other abandoned tunnels below the city with some unfortunate results. They unknowingly blocked some centuries-old hydrology.
Digger named the main underground chamber “The Great Hall.” It was soon enlarged to spread under the adjacent buildings downtown, which had no basements and without the knowledge of their owners or the city of San Antonio.
Some limestone pillars and arches were left to keep the cavern from caving in. The temperature of this underground factory was the coolest space in San Antonio during the hot summers. Thermal-chimney interior courtyards built around the Great Hall let light and air into the huge space. This compound was the world’s most unusual factory. Years ago, the city sealed access to most of the tunnels.
The San Antonio River wanders through the downtown area. Of course, the river was nothing like the beautiful tourist attraction of today. Back in the 1800’s, the river was small but had a constant flow except for flash flooding. Bulkhead seals were built to prevent flooding when renovating the warehouse.
Paladin’s crew had built a large round window in the upper basement in the thick factory wall to watch the fish swim by. A door on the ground level opened to a secluded area on the shore of the river where the employees could eat lunch, play dominoes, and fish.
The Small-Team is building some lidar-scanner backpacks to use when they explore the tunnel system under San Antonio. Then we will use the data to build a virtual 3D model of the site.Digger
There was only one man in Texas who knew Roman-mining techniques. An ex-miner in Austin, Texas, named Digger, knew about the caves under San Antonio, and he knew Paladin.
Digger led the team to carve and shape the cavernous limestone into an underground factory. And, it all had to be kept secret.
Digger was initially from Ute City, Colorado, where he had been a silver miner. He later moved to Austin and became a grave digger, thus his name. He lived in Austin beneath a small castle in Hyde Park, where he had carved out a living space.
More on Digger later…