King's Highway - Camino Real - Old San Antonio Road
San Marcos, Hays County, Texas
Marker Inscription
King's Highway - Camino Real - Old San Antonio Road. Marked by the Daughters of the American Revolution and the State of Texas A.D. 1918
Erected by Texas Historical Commission
The Story
This marker stands along the old King's Highway, or El Camino Real, the Spanish colonial road that became known as the Old San Antonio Road. Blazed to connect Texas missions and presidios with the heart of New Spain, it served for well over a century as a lifeline of travel and settlement. In 1918 the Daughters of the American Revolution and the State of Texas placed markers like this one to trace its historic path.
Why it matters
The road links the Spanish colonial founding of Texas to its later Mexican and American eras, tracing a corridor of migration that shaped the settlement of the Southwest.
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Related people
- · Daughters of the American Revolution
Themes & tags
Nearby & related markers
King's Highway - Camino Real - Old San Antonio Road
New Braunfels, TX
The King's Highway — El Camino Real, later called the Old San Antonio Road — was the great overland artery laid out under Spanish rule to link the missions and presidios of Texas with the interior of New Spain. For generations it carried soldiers, priests, traders, and eventually Anglo colonists across the Texas frontier. In 1918 the Daughters of the American Revolution and the State of Texas set a chain of markers along its route to keep the old road from being forgotten.
Wonder Cave
San Marcos, TX
Formed within the Balcones Fault by ancient earth movements, Wonder Cave sits in country long traveled by Native peoples and Spanish priests along the old Camino Real, with local legend adding tales of 1820s bandits and buried loot. Anglo-Texan settlers rediscovered it in 1893 when a water-well drill plunged 158 feet into the hollow beneath their home. By about 1900 it had become the state's first commercially opened cave, drawing visitors on candlelit tours.
Sanders-Grosgebauer House
San Marcos, TX
Built about 1913 on San Antonio Street—originally the stagecoach road to San Antonio—by S. H. and Annie Sanders, this American foursquare home passed to Albert and Rosa Grosgebauer in 1919. During his student days at the local college, future president Lyndon B. Johnson was often a dinner guest here. The house, an uncommon foursquare design for San Marcos, became a Recorded Texas Historic Landmark in 1992.
McGehee Crossing
San Marcos, TX
This spot marks where the Camino Real—the King's Highway from Nacogdoches to the Rio Grande—forded the San Marcos River. The French explorer St. Denis traveled it in 1714 to open trade with the Spanish, and the Austins likely crossed near here during their 1820–21 colonization efforts. Thomas McGehee settled on the east bank around 1846, and the family's long association gave the crossing its name.