Balcones Heights is an incorporated city in the middle of San Antonio that sits on the near Northwest side, and is considered the crossroads of the city because it sits right at the intersection of IH-10 and Loop 410. In fact, the .7 miles of pear-shaped city has an entire mall named Crossroads for that very reason. It houses roughly 3,000 residents and has its own mayor, city council and crime patrol, despite the fact that it is so small.
There are a lot of businesses and homes in the area that provide the tax revenue needed to sustain all of these services.
Because it is such a small area of land, Balcones Heights does not have its own school district. In fact, it sits in a very borderline spot for two school districts, which is why it is served by more than one school district.
Part of the residents are served by San Antonio Independent School District (SAISD) and the other part by North East Independent School District (NEISD).
Each year, Balcones Heights holds a Jazz Festival that spans five weekends over July and August. Acclaimed musicians both local and from other areas converge upon The Amphitheatre at Crossroads Mall for the event. For more information, call (210) 732-0055.
The Bijou Art Cinema and Café is the city’s only first-run arthouse film movie theater. It has a small café including a beer and wine selection and the best independent and art films that are recently released and first-run.
The City of Balcones Heights was incorporated in 1948 and has been thriving ever since. It was once thought of as nothing but a speed trap, where San Antonio residents would get pulled over for speeding in order to generate revenue for the small city.
That reputation began to change when businesses started moving into the city. First, it was small mom-and-pop stores that became the backbone of the commercial side of the community.
Houses were built and were affordable for families with median incomes that still wanted a safe and spacious place to live. Then came larger businesses like the now-defunct Montgomery Ward’s and Wonderland Mall, which has since been renamed Crossroads Mall and includes a movie theater that sells beer and wine.
Although this is the history of the City of Balcones Heights, the land it sits upon has history that reaches even further back than that. The main street running through Balcones Heights is Fredericksburg Road, which was widely used as not only a military route dating back to the 1840s but also as a stagecoach route that connected San Antonio to other parts of Texas and made it much easier to travel.
Stagecoach routes like this one and the nearby railroad tracks in Balcones Heights made it much easier to bring new people into the city for settling down, which is the basis of the city of San Antonio as we know it today.