169. How Phil Hardberger Built a Park, a Land Bridge, and a Wildlife Corridor for San Antonio

This week on bigcitysmalltown, host Cory Ames tells the story of the Robert L.B. Tobin Land Bridge at Phil Hardberger Park — in a new format for the show. Rather than a traditional guest conversation, this episode is a narrated oral history, recorded in the field at the park itself, weaving together tape from a morning walk Cory took with former Mayor Phil Hardberger and natural resources manager Wendy Leonard.

Just a week or so before this episode was released, a bronze statue of Phil Hardberger was unveiled at the park that bears his name. He is 91 years old and still walks the trails.

The episode covers:

• How Phil Hardberger promised San Antonio a new park while running for mayor — and spent two years looking for the right land
• The phone call that led him to a former dairy farm on the north side, never fully clear-cut, 330 acres still largely as nature left it
• How Wurzbach Parkway split the property in two — and why that became the genesis of one of the most celebrated wildlife bridges in the country
• The $23 million fight to fund the land bridge, the jury of architects Phil assembled, and the moment he committed to raising $12 million himself
• How the bridge was engineered — steel girders, three feet of soil, Corten steel walls designed to block sight and sound from 60,000 cars passing underneath daily
• Why animals began crossing before construction was even finished — and how within one year, all 31 mammal species known to inhabit the park had been documented using it
• What Wendy Leonard has learned managing the bridge's natural systems, and why the vegetation hasn't always cooperated
• How the land bridge reconnected a wildlife corridor stretching to the Salado Creek Greenway — and brought painted buntings back to the park

RECOMMENDED NEXT LISTEN:

▶ 168. More Than Parks: How San Antonio Is Building Trails, Gardens, and Green Space Into a Growing City — A Creative Futures panel on green equity, urban nature, and the push to integrate green spaces into every corner of a fast-growing city. Essential context for this conversation.

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