San Antonio local historian Ed Gaida is also the author of Sidewalks of San Antonio, a look at the work of the contractors who built San Antonio’s first sidewalks, where their names stamped into once-wet concrete remain visible decades later.

“Ed Gaida is the go-to guy for the hidden history of an astonishing variety of arcane topics -- old clocks, theater organs, telephone books, sidewalks and streetcars among them. But the greatest of these is Playland Park, no less than a San Antonio institution. Mention Playland, and people’s eyes light up, across a huge age range. This book brings the scattered pieces of Playland back together with a special bonus, the behind-the-scenes story of amusement impresario Jimmy Johnson.”

-- Paula Allen,
author of San Antonio Then and Now