El Camino Real: Tracing a Timeless Trail

The Camino can definitely allow someone to travel back in time. The borderlands, the frontera, the frontier on the Rio Grande, there are these worlds, these places coming together and that's what the Camino has always done. The cultural imprints that the Spanish left in the 1700s are still seen in many of these towns along the Camino. The Camino Real has always been about interaction between different cultures. We see that happening today. That trade and travel still takes place at these crossings. There are still connections there that have lasted for hundreds of years over time. This actually might be it. You can see the rapid right through here. I'm Stephen Gonzalez. This could very well be part of the historic crossing. I'm executive director of El Camino Real de las Tejas National Historic Trail Association. We're here at Los Corralitos Ranch in south Texas right on the banks of the Rio Grande. Still a working ranch dating to the Spanish colonial period and we're scouting around right now trying to see if we can find swales, remnants of the road out here on the landscape. But it's so thick through here it is hard to tell right now. El Camino Real de las Tejas is the old royal road that came up from Mexico City to establish Texas in Spanish colonial times. It's the road that led to the founding of Texas. There are many Caminos Reales that make up the Camino Real. In times past these roads had different names because of the places that they were going to. The Old San Antonio Road, the Nacogdoches Road, La Bahia Road, and the Laredo Road. Every Texan of note that we can think of all the way from Spaniards such as Alonso de Leon to Davy Crockett, Jim Bowie, Sam Houston, they all traveled along portions of the Camino Real at one time or another and it's really elemental to the state's history. We think about things like the Battle of the Alamo and Goliad and we forget that those troops were actually traveling along roadways, pathways, and that those were largely the Camino Real and segments of it. So one of our goals is to make the public more aware of it. Essentially Spain was establishing this new kingdom in what is now the USA. They saw the French as a threat. In 1714 the French established Fort Saint John Baptiste in Nacogdoche, Louisiana. That is the oldest settlement in Louisiana and the easternmost part of the Camino Real. That French settlement alarmed the Spanish. So the Spanish in turn established the first capital of Texas at Los Adais in what is now Robelene, Louisiana. No one could imagine that the first capital of Texas is in present-day Louisiana. It was essentially these two European powers standing off from what they considered to be the wilderness. But once that French threat subsided, there was no longer a need for those missions and presidios to be out there. And so those fortifications and settlements, they fell back and back and back. There is something about the South Texas landscape that I think more easily evokes the Camino and travel by Spaniards in times past. San Ignacio is a very unique community along the Camino Real. It's essentially an old Mexican village that was built in the mid-1830s, which is being preserved and taken care of by people like the River Pierce Foundation and others there in the community to help protect it for future generations to see and explore. This is more like a Mexican village than anything because of course it was. It is the last of its kind in this country. It's one of the best places anywhere along the trail to kind of get that vicarious experience of the Camino and what it may have been like in times past. Another great place to go and experience the Camino in South Texas is Goliad. There's no better place to go and see what a Spanish presidio would have looked like. So these presidios stretched all the way from the Gulf of Mexico to the Gulf of California and Goliad was the easternmost presidio on the northern line of defense in New Spain. Goliad has two mission sites. Mission Espiritu Santo de Zuniga dating back to 1749 and we also have Mission Rosario on the other side of the river beginning in 1754. Espiritu Santo was active here all the way up until 1830. The majority of the restoration work took place in the 1930s but when you walk inside the chapel you're getting a really good idea of what it would have looked like during the 18th century. The Carancavo they didn't get along with the Ironamas that were already there so they created another mission. Mission Rosario is not restored. It's got the foundations and the remnants of the walls there so it gives you an idea of the architecture before the restoration would have taken place. There's a new visitor center being constructed and it'll highlight the trail and show how those missions are attached to it. El Camino Real went directly through the town of Goliad. They would have needed to transport goods and people back and forth between places like San Antonio as far north as Nacogdoches. When we think of things like Goliad or the missions in San Antonio we forget that there was a road that connected those things. If you look at the layout of San Antonio with the Camino connecting all the missions you have the plaza at the core with the Spanish governor's palace the seat of government there and San Fernando Cathedral right there on the plaza. It really does have the layout that does fit that formula that the Spanish prescribed way back when and it's still there on the landscape today. 35 really became the superhighway that it is because of the travel along the Camino Real here in central Texas. Following the foot of the escarpment they would have come to these beautiful springs. Unlike us flying down a modern highway they were moving at a much slower pace so they had barajas or campsites every basically 10 to 20 miles. The towns here in central Texas essentially pop up along the springs. There are many archives in the state that have great maps and other historical records related to the Camino Real. One of them being the general land office in Austin. This is the 1833 map of Austin's colony. That is impressive. They have great maps property deeds and other things that document the Camino like boundaries of the old Stephen F Austin colony. The old San Antonio road is pretty much the northwestern boundary here. Yes it almost looks like where it's crossing the Colorado. We know where the trail went through many different kinds of evidence. The old San Antonio road is clearly here along the top. So we look at old maps this one right here yeah that would indicate that it's somewhere up here in the Austin area roughly around where McKinney Falls is nowadays. There's the historical record so we look at the written record from the Spanish. It's hard to see what that is. From the French from early Anglo settlers that refers to the trail. Where we have our archaeological project going on is right in here. Another thing that we can do is discover the trail through archaeological efforts. It's like peeling an onion very slowly. Currently we're working on our Rancho Rio Grande archaeological project in Milam County near the community of Gauze. These stones were purposely placed here they follow a semicircle. Working with private landowners we've actually been able to document numerous village sites. There's another post. As well as an unbelievable amount of Native American artifacts. So this would be a defining wall of the structure. So we know that in all probability what we're dealing with is one of the circular style homes. The Rancho Rio Grande was essentially a conglomeration of 22 Native American tribes. Mission style points were found up on this area. So right there we know these domestic structures date to the Spanish colonial period. The Spanish documented really early on some of the earliest maps do depict the Rancho Rio Grande and label it there in that general area of what is now Milam County. It's more extensive. Back in here all these petroglyphs within the rock. It's just a place like no other I've seen in Texas. All these points here came off of this property here. Landowners have their own collections and we found things all the way from the point of contact to projectile points that are paleo-Indian in nature over 10,000 years old. So it really is this place where there's this huge human history that has occurred over centuries. In East Texas there are some great places that are publicly owned that you can see and experience the trail. One of the best is Mission Tejas State Park. It's still one of the rare places where you can go and hike along the actual Camino and walk in the footsteps of Spanish explorers and early American settlers from the late 1600s to the 1800s as people were coming through either way along the trail. Mission Tejas State Park also contains a commemorative structure of the first mission in Texas and that's Mission San Francisco de los Tejas. Established in 1690 by the Spanish on their first expedition to East Texas. So it's a great place to see and experience the trail. Right next door to Mission Tejas State Park is Caddo Mound State Historic Site. The Caddo people built mounds there at the site, ceremonial mounds. This is the Caddo Grass House. It was built last summer. They have a new visitor center there which does a great job of interpreting that early Native American history. Plus it has a great remnant of the trail there as well in the form of a swale with some great signage. I think it gives you that impression of distance when you're standing there at the Caddo Mound site. The Neches is only a mile and a half from where we're standing. Travelers coming west to east they would want to try and cross the Neches River at the end of the day. Make it up to the plateau here and then camp on high ground. El Camino Real was surely a Native American trail before it was a Spanish royal road. And the Caddo in this area are actually known to have taken the Spanish, guided them across these roads. So they were well traveled. Some of these Caddo roads were actually deemed to be as good as the roads leading into Paris. The word Tejas is a Caddoan Indian word the Spanish took to mean as friends. So we wouldn't have the name Texas without that Caddoan Indian word Tejas. They are very proud of the trail and its history. Nacogdoches is one of the oldest communities in Texas. The first mission in Nacogdoches was established in 1716. You see on Main Street it's called El Camino Real just off the plaza. We are the first National Historic Trail Organization to actually own a piece of a National Historic Trail and that is the Lobanillo Swales. We're here in Sabine County at the Lobanillo Swales. The East Texas term for that is wagon tracks. When it was wet this would get boggy. So what do they do? They just move over a few feet and start another one. We've got the northern edge of the property up here which is Highway 21 and then the red line indicates the loop trail. Right now it's in a raw form. There's no development. There's all kinds of undergrowth. Right there, right there. We're working with the National Park Service, Sabine County and others. Good morning Steven. To make the Lobanillo Swales accessible to the public. Welcome to Sabine County. The county judge thinks it's one of their best tourist resources within the county. This is a beautiful set of plans. We work with all kinds of partners because it does take a combined effort to help develop the trail. Can't wait to see it open. All right, thank you judge. Appreciate it. In Sabine County, not far from our property, the Gaines Oliphant House is on the banks of the Sabine River. Gaines ended up here in 1812 here at the crossing. In 1815 he bought the ferry. He built this house down here. We can pretty well prove it was built in 1818. And is it true this is the oldest Anglo-American structure in Texas? Log structure. Yeah, log structure. It's a place that is really deep in Texas history and which essentially every Texan coming from the east would have crossed through at one point or another back in the 1800s. So we've traveled from the Rio Grande and now we're here on the Sabine River at the Texas-Louisiana border. Historically, the trail would have continued on to the first capital of Texas at Los Hadaes, which is present-day Louisiana. But here we stand on Toledo Bend. This is the end of the road in modern-day Texas before heading on to Natchitoches, Louisiana, about 60 miles away. The Camino has always been a place that has bridged borders. It's brought people, cultures, and places together and helped to create the state of Texas that we know today. And that's why it's worthy of its designation as a National Historic Trail.