Zero Milestone, Old Spanish Trail

The trail on this stone was a 1920s highway, not a colonial road. An association formed in Mobile, Alabama, in December 1915 chose the name Old Spanish Trail to promote a southern transcontinental highway from St. Augustine to San Diego. In 1919 it set up headquarters at the Gunter Hotel in San Antonio, and by August 1926 it had handed out 83,000 maps and travel booklets. The highway was completed in 1929. In Texas it entered at Orange and ran through Beaumont, Houston and San Antonio to El Paso, well south of the Old San Antonio Road.

What the plaque says

Zero milestone Old Spanish Trail St. Augustine Pensacola - Mobile New Orleans - Houston San Antonio El Paso - Tucson - Yuma San Diego Dedicated By Governor Pat M. Neff March 27, 1924 Erected by The San Antonio City Federation of Women's Clubs Mrs. J. K. Beretta, President

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• San Fernando Cathedral — steps away
  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 — steps away
  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.
• Casa Navarro State Historic Site — steps away
  The adobe and caliche-block home of José Antonio Navarro, a native-born signer of the 1836 declaration, and the last remnant of the Tejano neighborhood called Laredito.
• San Antonio River Walk — 0.4 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

• Plaza De Armas (Military Plaza) — steps away
• Moses Austin — steps away
• Bexar County under Nine Governments — steps away
• Barbed Wire — steps away