Shortly after the end of the U.S.-Mexican War, Benton was assigned to San Antonio to serve as inspector of arsenals at the city’s ordinance depot. A graduate of West Point, he had training as a topographical draftsman, and he applied his skills to recording the scenery in and around San Antonio during the three years he was stationed there.

Benton’s efforts culminated in an album of 88 historical sketches of the city, its inhabitants, and its surrounding environs, including this exterior view of Mission San José, one of five missions established by the Spanish along the San Antonio River between 1718 and 1731. Newspaper accounts from the period suggest that Benton used his San Antonio pictures to create a giant moving panorama portraying notable events from Texas history, though such a panorama does not survive.

—Text taken from the Carter Handbook (2023).