The Camino Real

After 1848 the old royal road through San Elizario became part of the Lower El Paso, or Military, Road from Corpus Christi to California, and hundreds of Forty-Niners passed through in the late 1840s. Many travelers wrote admiringly of the town's peaches, plums and wheat. Companies of the Third Infantry under Jefferson Van Horne were stationed here from 1849 to 1852, and a post office was open from 1851 to 1869. In 1881 the railroad bypassed San Elizario in favor of El Paso, and the town declined.

What the plaque says

The Camino Real For more than 200 years the Camino Real, or Royal Road, was the major route for transporting commercial goods from Mexico City and Chihuahua to Santa Fe and Taos. First traveled by Juan de Onate during his 1598 expedition to New Mexico, the Camino Real followed the San Elizario, Socorro, and Ysleta Road, crossed the Rio Grande west of present downtown El Paso, and continued north into New Mexico. When the Rio Grande was established as the U.S. - Mexico boundary in 1848, this section of the old Camino Real became part of the United States. (1983)

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• San Elizario Historic District — steps away
  A plaza of adobe buildings at the end of the El Paso Mission Trail: an 1877 chapel, Gregorio Garcia's portaled house and the old county jail of Billy the Kid legend.
• Socorro Mission (Nuestra Senora de la Limpia Concepcion del Socorro) — 5.4 mi
  Socorro's adobe church on the El Paso Mission Trail, with walls five feet thick, carved vigas from an older church and a statue of Saint Michael said to have chosen the town.
• Tigua Indian Cultural Center, Ysleta del Sur Pueblo — 7.2 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.
• Ysleta Mission (Corpus Christi de la Ysleta del Sur) — 8.0 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.

More markers nearby

• Salt War — steps away
• Rodriguez-Chamuscado Expedition, 1581 — steps away
• Espejo-Beltran Expedition - 1582-1583 — steps away
• Juan de Onate Expedition - 1598 — steps away