Site of Camino Real

The Upper Road through this county was a path of names before it was a highway. The Handbook of Texas says Louis Juchereau de St. Denis probably crossed the area in 1713, and Governor Martin de Alarcon rode it in 1718 to the missions among the Texas Indians. Zebulon Pike likely passed along it in 1807 after release from Chihuahua, and Moses Austin may have followed it in 1820, seeking a colonization contract. Later the road became the northern line of Austin's colony and a boundary with Robertson's.

What the plaque says

Site of Camino Real (The old San Antonio Road) Great thoroughfare of early Texas. Following ancient Indian and buffalo paths, sometimes on same course as 1691 "Trail of the Padres", stretches 1,000 miles from Saltillo, Mexico, to present Louisiana. Highway for explorers, traders, smugglers, adventurers, settlers, armies. Was surveyed about 1800 and given name of "King's Highway". Here, as in some other areas, the modern highway follows historic El Camino Real. Also, in this particular area, El Camino Real marked boundary between the major early 19th century colonies of Stephen F. Austin and Sterling C. Robertson. (1968)

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Lake Somerville State Park and Trailway — 11 mi
  Two park units on an 11,000-acre lake between Austin and College Station, joined by a thirteen-mile trailway for hikers, cyclists and riders with primitive camps along the way.
• Texas Wendish Heritage Museum — 23 mi
  A museum at Serbin of the Wends, a Slavic people from Lusatia whose congregation of nearly 600 crossed on the Ben Nevis in 1854, losing seventy-three to cholera on the way.
• Round Top and Festival Hill — 25 mi
  A German village on the old La Bahía Road, named for a house tower, with an 1867 stone church, a Fourth of July kept since 1851 and a concert hall a pianist built without blueprints.
• Independence and Old Baylor Park — 28 mi
  A crossroads north of Brenham that was the richest town in Texas when it won Baylor University in 1845, refused the railroad, and lost the college to Waco and Belton in 1886.

More markers nearby

• King's Highway - Camino Real - Old San Antonio Road — 0.8 mi
• An Arm of The Chisholm Cattle Trail — 1.7 mi
• Deanville — 3.6 mi
• Old Dime Box — 4.6 mi