King's Highway - Camino Real - Old San Antonio Road

The road on this stone was blazed by three expeditions. Alonso De León led his fourth expedition into Texas in 1690 to found San Francisco de los Tejas, Domingo Terán de los Ríos crossed the Rio Grande in 1691, and in 1693 Gregorio de Salinas Varona became the first to travel directly from the Rio Grande to the East Texas missions. Spanish ranchers drove cattle along it to the annual fair at Saltillo. It was really a network of trails, and the stretch below San Antonio shifted southeast over the eighteenth century, probably to avoid Apache and Comanche attacks.

What the plaque says

King's Highway - Camino Real - Old San Antonio Road. Marked by the Daughters of the American Revolution and the State of Texas A. D. 1918

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• The Alamo — 6.5 mi
  Mission San Antonio de Valero before it was a fort: a church its builders never finished, a thirteen-day siege in 1836, and the Army gable of 1850-52 that became its emblem.
• San Fernando Cathedral — 6.7 mi
  The Canary Islanders' parish church on Main Plaza, where Bowie married and Santa Anna raised a red flag, rebuilt in Gothic Revival around the walls of the 1750s church.
• Spanish Governor's Palace — 6.7 mi
  The last visible piece of the Presidio San Antonio de Béxar: a presidio captain's house with a 1749 keystone, a century as shops and saloons, and a romantic 1930 restoration.
• San Antonio River Walk — 6.8 mi
  A Depression-era park one level below downtown, built because San Antonio refused to pave its river after the 1921 flood, and designed by an architect the project later fired.

More markers nearby

• Route of El Camino Real — steps away
• The Dawson Massacre — 2.2 mi
• The Battle of the Salado — 2.8 mi
• Dodd Field (Fort Sam Houston) Enemy Alien Detention Station, World War II — 2.9 mi