The Camino Real

For a time the road through Socorro ran across an island. In the early 1830s the Rio Grande cut a new channel south of its old one, leaving Ysleta, Socorro and San Elizario on a strip some twenty miles long and two to four miles wide that people called La Isla. By 1848 water no longer flowed in the old bed, the Río Viejo. Acequias watered the island's corn, wheat, fruit and vegetables, and visiting officials ranked its grapes, wine and brandy with the best in the viceroyalty. Most of the land belonged to wealthy Paseños across the river.

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

• Socorro Mission (Nuestra Senora de la Limpia Concepcion del Socorro) — steps away
  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 — 1.9 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) — 2.6 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.
• San Elizario Historic District — 5.4 mi
  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.

More markers nearby

• Socorro — steps away
• Socorro Mission La Purísima — steps away
• Early Site of Socorro Mission — 0.7 mi
• Rio Vista Farm — 2.2 mi