El Camino Real (The King's Highway)

Downtown El Paso, where this stone stands, began as a Mexican land grant. In January 1827 Juan María Ponce de León, a wealthy merchant of El Paso del Norte, asked that town's council for some 215 acres of mud flats on the north bank of the Rio Grande, and the grant was approved that September. He dug an irrigation ditch, planted corn, grapes and wheat, and built adobe roundhouses for protection from raiders. In the summer of 1849 he sold the land to Benjamin Franklin Coons, and as Coons' Rancho it housed the army's first post at the pass.

What the plaque says

El Camino Real (The King's Highway) The regal highway extending between his Catholic majesty's far-flung kingdoms of New Spain, from Mexico City to the Kingdom of New Mexico, passed here. From 1581 onward it was the route followed by conqueror, padre, merchant, adventurer and settler. Along its course passed ox-cart and mule-train and the traffic of the new realm. Erected by the State of Texas 1936

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Magoffin Home State Historic Site — 0.7 mi
  A U-shaped adobe of the 1870s in central El Paso that joins Mexican building to an Anglo plan, closed for restoration through 2027 while its visitor center stays open.
• Chamizal National Memorial — 2.1 mi
  A park on land the Rio Grande once put in dispute, where a century-old border quarrel between the United States and Mexico was settled by treaty and a new concrete channel.
• Ysleta Mission (Corpus Christi de la Ysleta del Sur) — 11 mi
  The Tigua mission church at Ysleta, rebuilt in 1908 around the walls, bell and Santo Entierro that came through fire, its interior painted with rain clouds and corn.
• Tigua Indian Cultural Center, Ysleta del Sur Pueblo — 11 mi
  The cultural center of Ysleta del Sur Pueblo, the Tigua nation that has lived in the Mission Valley of El Paso since 1682 and keeps its own history here.

More markers nearby

• San Jacinto Plaza — steps away
• El Paso's Chinese Community — steps away
• El Paso County, C.S.A. — steps away
• Pioneer Plaza — steps away