About the Library

The library is named after Julia Laura Yates Semmes, who was born October 20, 1904, in Stanton, Texas. She was raised on a ranch in West Texas and moved to San Antonio in 1941. At the age of 80, Mrs. Semmes developed macular degeneration, the leading cause of blindness in Americans over 55. Mrs. Semmes worked with the Texas Commission for the Blind to learn how to continue to live independently in spite of her loss of vision. In 2000, the Semmes Foundation donated $1 million to the San Antonio Public Library to create a special collection, including books and equipment, for the visually impaired. The Semmes Foundation has pledged an additional $250,000 for materials and equipment for the Semmes Branch at Comanche Lookout Park. Mrs. Semmes died November 5, 2002, at the age of 98.

Using Comanche Tower as a focal point, the Library’s reading areas are oriented to take advantage of views of the natural park setting. The site orientation also takes into account the solar path to capture indirect natural light while minimizing the amount of direct sunlight. Rainwater is collected in this environmentally friendly building and piped into water cisterns to be used to help meet irrigation demands on the site. The remaining surface water is channeled into a new landscaped wetlands area that naturally filters the water and contributes to the park’s ecosystem. The main reading area allows seamless integration between indoor and outdoor spaces through the use of a 20-foot glass wall along the parkside view of the building.

About the Park

Comanche Lookout Park is a 96-acre public park owned by the City of San Antonio. The site includes the fourth highest point in Bexar County with an elevation of 1,340 feet. The Cibolo floodplain lies at the base of this escarpment between the Gulf Coastal Plain and the Edwards Plateau. Vegetation on the hill includes native ash juniper, Texas and Mexican buckeye, chinaberry, graneno, Lindheimer hackberry, honey mesquite and huisache.

Native Americans used this hill as a vantage point for warfare and hunting. The Apache, and later, the Comanche Indians dominated the area as they hunted along waterways including nearby Cibolo Creek. The hill was also a prominent landmark for travelers in the 18th and 19th centuries. The old Spanish road (one of several routes of the Camino Real or Royal Road) from San Antonio to Bastrop and Nacogdoches in East Texas extended past the base of the hill. The road followed earlier American Indian travel routes, and today its remnants are known as Nacogdoches Road.

The land was acquired by a number of owners over the years beginning in 1848 until it was sold to retired Army Colonel Edward H. Coppock in February 1923. Coppock was a romantic and history aficionado, and with assistance from his two sons and a man named Tarquino Cavazos, he constructed an extensive compound on the hill including a four-story, medieval-style stone tower. Coppock envisioned a castle-like house, but completed only its foundation. Both he and Mr. Cavasos died in 1948 and the project was abandoned. Colonel Coppock's children sold the land in 1968 to a developer who cleared all of the structures except for the tower and some remnant foundations.

The property traded hands several times before the real estate market collapse of the 1980s led to the Resolution Trust Corporation’s ownership of the remaining Comanche Lookout property in 1990. At that time, a private sector effort was organized to preserve the site led by a group named Save Comanche Lookout. This resulted in the Trust for Public Lands providing an interim loan to the City of San Antonio to purchase Comanche Lookout for a City park.

About the Project

In addition to landscaping the wetlands that border the park and the library, volunteers planted around the Ewing Halsell Outdoor Classroom, resulting in a beautifully landscaped area for children to learn in a natural setting.

Select the picture below to view a slideshow of the project.