Beginning in the 1700s, the Camino Real de San Saba extended northwest from San Antonio through the Comanche- and Apache-dominated Hill Country to the Spanish fort on the San Saba River, Presidio San Luis de las Amarillas. A portion of the trail appeared on a Spanish-era map of the San Antonio Presidio in 1767 by Joseph de Urrutia, and after the San Saba Presidio officially closed in 1772, the route also became known in later documents as Camino Viejo, or Old Trail. Along with the Pinta Trail, it served as a useful pathway into the Hill Country for Spanish entradas, early explorers, and later settlers. Early surveyors, including John "Jack" Coffee Hays and John James, helped document and preserve the historic road's alignment in Kendall County through their field notes and maps. Although the Pinta Trail, a few miles to the east, was initially more popular, both routes were used by German settlers from the 1840s onward. In 1847, Alwin Sorgel recorded that there were two roads from San Antonio into the grant, with the Camino Viejo going in a westerly direction and the Pindas Trail going in a northerly direction, and that Indians had used these trails for centuries. German cartographer Hermann Willke depicted both trails on an 1850 map. Camino Real San Saba came down this hill and passed a half-mile west of Boerne's Main Plaza, platted in 1852 by Gustav Theisen and John James, then threaded a pre-Boerne settlement and farther north, after passing through Spanish Pass, crossed the Guadalupe River where Brownsboro sprang up.