Discreet 24/7 Biohazard Remediation in Balcones Heights, TX

Balcones Heights is a tiny enclave city in Bexar County that is now completely surrounded by San Antonio, about nine miles northwest of downtown.

Residents voted to incorporate Balcones Heights on November 13, 1948 — by a margin of 35 to 3 — specifically to avoid being annexed into San Antonio.

Balcones Heights covers only about 0.6 square miles, yet Interstate 10 and Loop 410 both pass through and intersect within its city limits.

The city's name traces back to 1756, when Spanish explorer Bernardo de Miranda y Flores called the stair-stepped hills rising from San Antonio "Los Balcones" because they reminded him of balconies.

Balcones Heights sits on historic Fredericksburg Road, a 19th-century stagecoach route, and the Old Spanish Trail — the first transcontinental highway across the southern United States — carried motorists through the community beginning in 1919.

The Census Bureau counted 2,746 people in Balcones Heights in 2020, down from a peak of about 3,016 in 2000, when the census recorded 1,437 households in the little city.

By the city's own recent accounting, Balcones Heights contains only about 300 single-family homes alongside roughly 2,700 apartment residents, making it a predominantly renter community.

Wonderland of the Americas, which opened in 1961 as Wonderland Shopping City, was the first indoor shopping mall in Bexar County and still anchors Balcones Heights.

In October 1960, the future mall site hosted the world premiere celebration for John Wayne's film "The Alamo," complete with what was billed as the world's largest Battle of the Alamo cake.

In its early years Balcones Heights was a no-tax town with a checkered 1950s reputation for funding itself through speed-trap revenue, and one early ordinance required men aged 21 to 45 to spend five days a year working on public streets and alleys.