A Tavern Keeper’s Last Stand at the Alamo

“I’m right in the battlefield of why Texas is Texas,” says Vince Cantu, who runs Moses Rose’s Hideout, a San Antonio, Texas, bar that’s on the site of the Alamo and the famous 1836 battle that was memorialized on the big screen by the likes of John Wayne and Billy Bob Thornton.

Cantu opened Moses Rose’s—named ironically after the Texas legend who fled the Alamo instead of standing his ground and fighting—in 2010 after it had sat vacant for many years. He comes from four generations of San Antonio tavern owners.

“I feel like I am on the shoulders of giants,” says Cantu. “I like what I do, and I like where I do it. “

The Alamo Trust, a nonprofit that manages the site, wants to expand the Alamo museum, which would include building a theater and civil rights exhibit where Moses Rose’s Hideout currently stands. Cantu says that in 2016, the group made its first offer of a million dollars, signed by then-Land Commissioner George P. Bush, which would’ve barely covered his outstanding loans. Four years later, they upped it to $2 million.

At the outset, the $400 million museum expansion project was supposed to be paid for by private donors. When funding fell through, the state of Texas stepped in to cover the cost. The Alamo project leads made two more offers, which Cantu rejected. He said he’d sell for $15 million. So state officials, who declined to participate in this story, countered by threatening to take his property using eminent domain. Cantu would receive a so-called “fair market price” based on an independent appraiser’s estimate of the property’s current value.

The appraiser valued it at $2.1 million today and at an estimated $2.8 million in 10 years. In December, the Alamo Trust offered $3.5