Historical Marker
Route of El Camino Real
San Antonio, Bexar County · Texas
Erected 1979
The surveyor found little trace of the road between the Rio Grande and San Antonio. To fix a route, V. N. Zivley studied river crossings, Spanish land grants and Republic of Texas laws, and leaned on Juan Agustín Morfi's diary of 1778. His line began at Paso de Francia on the Rio Grande, passed near Cotulla and Poteet, entered San Antonio and ran on to Gaines Ferry on the Sabine, 540 miles in all. In 1929 the legislature named Zivley's version one of the historic trails of Texas.
What the plaque says
Route of El Camino Real The main thoroughfare of early Texas, The Camino Real, or "King's Highway", followed ancient Indian and buffalo trail. It stretched 1,000 miles from Mexico to present Louisiana. Domingo Teran de los Rios, first Governor of Texas, blessed the central section of the road in 1691. Called the "Trail of the Padres", it linked Monclova, Mexico, with the Spanish Missions of East Texas. Over the centuries, priests, soldiers, traders, and settlers used the Camino Real. The French adventurer T. Denis probably traveled the road from Lousiana to the Rio Grande in 1714. San Antonio was a major stop on this frontier highway. Moses Austin followed the Camino Real to San Antonio in 1820 seeking colonization rights from Spain. Many Anglo-American settlers called it the "old San Antonio Road". It joined this city with Nacogdoches, San Augustine, and other East Texas Settlements. In 1915 the Texas Legislature appropriated $5,000 to mark the historic roadway across the state. The Daughters of the American Revolution, along with other patriotic groups, endorsed the project. V.N. Zivley surveyed the route and indicated the spacing for granite markers every five miles. Today many modern highways follow the path of the Camino Real. (1979)
Where it stands
29.51527, -98.45361 · Directions
Worth the stop nearby
- The Alamo — 6.5 miMission 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 miThe 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 miThe 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 miA 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.