El Camino Real

El Camino Real was a trail of adventure, hardships, opportunity, and freedom over which history entered Texas. For the Spanish, it was a road traveled for the king to colonize, Christianize, seek adventure, or look for riches, and it became the most famous of these roads. Its many parts were made, discovered, or known hundreds of years before 1691, when Domingo Teran de los Rios, the first Texas governor, joined and marked the different trails for the king. It ran from Monclova, crossing the Rio Grande near Eagle Pass, to the missions of east Texas. Its earliest trailblazers were probably buffalo and Indians, or Aztecs on trading expeditions. It was also probably traveled, described, and changed in part by the French explorer La Salle; by Alonso de Leon and Father Damian Massanet as they planted missions in east Texas; and by the French nobleman St. Denis seeking trade along the Rio Grande. In 1820 Moses Austin traveled it, and thousands of settlers followed him. San Augustine, Nacogdoches, and San Antonio were its principal cities, and inns sprang up along the way. Soldiers and supply trains used it during the Texas Revolution, Mexican War, and Civil War, and parts of its route are still followed today.

Texas · United States