El Camino Real
Brazos County, Brazos County, Texas
Marker Inscription
Great thoroughfare of pioneer Texas, stretching 1,000 miles from Saltillo, Mexico, to present Louisiana. The general route followed ancient Indian and buffalo trails, but the oldest marked portion, known as "Trail of the Padres", was blazed in 1691 under Domingo Teran de los Rios, first Governor of Texas. This part joined Monclova, then capital of the province, to the Spanish missions of East Texas. San Antonio, military nerve center of the region, was a major stop. Over the centuries, explorers, traders, smugglers, armed men, and civilians traversed this road. In 1820 Moses Austin traveled it to San Antonio to request a land grant from Spanish officials. The colonizing venture he started later brought thousands of Anglo-Americans over the road to help settle Texas. In 1915 the Texas Legislature appropriated $5,000 to survey and mark the route. The Daughters of the American Revolution and other patriotic groups sponsored and endorsed the project, and V.N. Zivley was commissioned to make the survey. In 1918 the state and D.A.R. placed granite markers approximately every five miles along the Texas section of the road. Today many modern highways, particularly State 21, follow the original route of El Camino Real.
Erected by Texas Historical Commission
The Story
El Camino Real, the 'Royal Road,' ran roughly a thousand miles from Saltillo in Mexico into present-day Louisiana, following ancient Indian and buffalo trails. Its oldest marked segment was blazed in 1691 under Domingo Terán de los Ríos to link the provincial capital with the Spanish missions of East Texas, and in 1820 Moses Austin traveled it to San Antonio to request the land grant that opened Texas to Anglo-American settlement. In 1918 the state and the Daughters of the American Revolution set granite markers every five miles along the Texas route.
Why it matters
This corridor carried three centuries of explorers, missionaries, and colonists, making it one of the oldest and most consequential roads in North America.
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Related people
- · Domingo Terán de los Ríos
- · Moses Austin
Themes & tags
Nearby & related markers
Cooks Point
Cooks Point, TX
Cooks Point took root about 1840 where a colonial road from the southeast met the old San Antonio Road, a natural crossroads in the earliest years of the Republic of Texas. Settler Gabriel Jackson kept a two-story log cabin trading post here, and the community took its name from surveyor Silas L. Cooke, who mapped much of the surrounding land. It endures today as a rural village.
Brazos County
Bryan, TX
Carved from Washington County in 1841 as part of Stephen F. Austin's colony, this county was first called Navasota with its seat at Boonville, then renamed Brazos in 1842. Through the Civil War, Millican flourished as the end of the railroad from Houston, but when the line pushed north Bryan became the county seat in 1866. The 1876 opening of the Agricultural and Mechanical College of Texas — now Texas A&M — drew College Station into being around it.
El Camino Real
Benchley, TX
El Camino Real — the King's Highway, also called the Old San Antonio Road — was the great overland route by which Spanish colonization reached into Texas, formally marked by the first Texas governor in 1691 but following far older paths worn by buffalo, Native peoples, and traders. Over the centuries it carried explorers like La Salle and St. Denis, mission-founders such as De León and Massanet, and finally Moses Austin and the thousands of American settlers who followed him in 1820. Soldiers and supply trains moved along it through the Texas Revolution, the Mexican War, and the Civil War.
Site of the Town of Boonville
Bryan, TX
In 1841, a handful of Texas pioneers laid out Boonville on the Brazos frontier and made it the seat of what was first called Navasota County—renamed Brazos the following year. For a quarter century the little town served as the county's civic hub, taking its name from settler Mordecai Boon. Its fortunes collapsed in 1866 when the railroad arrived a few miles away and gave rise to Bryan, which drew away Boonville's people and purpose.