Former San Antonio Mayor Howard W. Peak — best known for the network of hiking and biking trails named in his honor — has died.
Peak represented District 9 on the San Antonio City Council from 1993 to 1997, and was elected mayor in 1997 after running on a platform of addressing water, education and employment issues.
He unseated incumbent Mayor William Thornton, who didn’t make the runoff with Peak and Kay Turner.
Before entering politics, Peak was an urban planner with a master’s degree in urban studies and environmental management from the University of Texas at San Antonio. Throughout his career Peak promoted the idea that parks and natural resources were part of a city’s core responsibilities.
“Howard Peak was a visionary mayor, a steward of our city, whose kindness and gentle style belied an intense focus that leaves a permanent legacy in San Antonio,” Mayor Ron Nirenberg said on social media on Sunday. “… Rest in peace, Mayor Peak.”
Peak graduated from Alamo Heights High School in 1967 and received his undergraduate degree from the University of Texas.
He served as a city planner for City of the San Antonio, taught urban administration at Trinity University and owned a land development service company.
Peak first developed the idea of putting trails near flood-prone creeks while serving on the city’s Zoning Commission.
That concept later grew into a much larger trail network, now known as the Howard W. Peak Greenway Trail System, which runs roughly 100 miles. It loops around the city and connects to other paths with more than 50 trailheads.
“I was doing a little bit of research about Salado Creek, and from that bit of research, I realized that we had an opportunity to have a circle of hike and bike trails around San Antonio,” Peak said in a 2013 video interview with then-City Council candidate Nirenberg. “I’m not sure there’s anything else like this, but we’re making good progress on connecting the pieces that we’re building.”
Peak helped secure an 8 cent sales tax to fund the trail system in the beginning, which voters have approved several times since then.
The trail system was renamed in his honor in 2013.
Peak also championed plans to protect San Antonio’s water resources, including pushing a 2000 sales tax measure to buy up land over the Edward’s Aquifer. Amid explosive growth in the Hill Country in recent years, that concept has been held up as a model conservation efforts in Texas.
“Just think about San Antonio without the Edwards Aquifer,” Peak said in the 2013 interview. “Other cities have rivers, some of them have coastal [water] sources, but for the most part, San Antonio gets its water from the underground system of the Edwards, and that means that we need to make sure that we do all we can to preserve it.”
Peak was reelected in 1999, and succeeded by Mayor Ed Garza in 2001, when Peak was term-limited from seeking reelection.
He’s survived by his wife, Marjorie Bratten Peak.
