What was camino real

But the road's claim to a more ancient distinction is less certain. In fact, the message implied by the presence of the mission bells — that motorists' tires trace the same path as the missionaries' sandals — is largely a myth imagined by regional boosters and early automotive tourists.

Although the definite article in the road's name suggests otherwise, California's El Camino Real was just one of many government roads that stretched through Spain's New World empire. These highways linked Spanish settlements in far-flung provinces to administrative centers. One well-established trail in Baja California preceded Alta California's by several decades.

In Alta California, one such road helped link the presidios military forts , pueblos civil towns , and religious missions that Spain furiously began building in to parry the territorial ambitions of Russia and Britain. But the stories told today about the footpath diverge from its actual history.

The road's exact route was not fixed; the actual path changed over time as weather, mode of travel, and even the tides dictated. Furthermore, while the road provided local transportation links between colonial settlements, the primitive highway was eclipsed in importance by a coastal water route between Alta California's south and north.

Ships rather than the so-called royal road usually transported goods and passengers over long distances. By the late nineteenth century, although local segments of the old trail were still heavily used, the route as a whole had faded into obscurity.

As Phoebe S. Kropp explains in her book " California Vieja ," it took the convergence of two powerful trends at the turn of the twentieth century to transform El Camino Real from an forgotten pathway into a main-traveled road. The first was the rise of the automobile, which created a small but influential group of wealthy Californians who clamored for a well-maintained state highway. The second was a reinterpretation of Spanish colonial California as a romantic paradise, fueled by the publication of Helen Hunt Jackson's "Ramona" and set within a broader cultural embrace of Southern California as a American Mediterranean retreat — "Our Italy," as Charles Dudley Warner titled his book on the region.

Regional boosters saw California's missions — some of which still functioned as parish churches, but many of them long-neglected and crumbling into ruin — as a place where tourists could commune with California's romantic past from the comfort of their modern machines.

To clothe El Camino Real with mythic significance, they invented sentimental stories about Franciscan fathers traveling along the road from mission to mission, which were supposedly spaced one day apart along the trail. Spearheaded by Los Angeles writer and activist Harrie Forbes and backed by groups like the Auto Club, the California Federation of Woman's Clubs, and the Native Daughters of the Golden West, efforts to refashion El Camino Real into a tourist highway gained steam in the first decade of the 20th century.

In , supporters organized the El Camino Real Association to mark the historical route, promote tourism along the road, and lobby for government support. Subscribe to America's largest dictionary and get thousands more definitions and advanced search—ad free! Log in Sign Up. Save Word. Definition of camino real. Love words? Start your free trial today and get unlimited access to America's largest dictionary, with: More than , words that aren't in our free dictionary Expanded definitions, etymologies, and usage notes Advanced search features Ad free!

Join Our Free Trial Now! The routes led toward the Nueces River, avoided a large sheet of waterless inland sand dunes to the southeast known as La Costa. The route also led across a wide expanse of thornbrush later called the Brasada.

The Spanish word brasada refers to something burned or burning, such as embers or hot coals. Toward the northeast, it bordered the deep sands and forest of El Atascoso and the Tapado, the umbrella-like growth of oaks and vegetation near the Atascosa River. By the s there were frequent accounts of wild horses blanketing the prairies, stampeding mounts and pack mules and interfering with cattle roundups. The subsequent increase in ranching gradually destroyed all traces of these vast herds.

Early travelers in the region were concerned with the locations of water sources. Southern Texas was characterized by only a few large rivers and a number of intermittent streams and charcos, or waterholes, often described as mala agua bad water. Names of campsites and streams such as agua verde green water , arroyo seco dry creek and las lagunillas de mala agua ponds of bad water reflected an early distaste for certain locales.

Nevertheless, these locations attracted both native Indian groups and thirsty explorers. About six leagues Projections of the route from an Medina County map show that the route crossed the Medina River just south of San Antonio near present-day Macdona in southwest Bexar County. By the early s, a variant of the Upper Presidio Road was established by Governor Antonio Cordero, probably in anticipation of a soon-to-come filibuster invasion from Louisiana.

Afterward, apparently, the two parallel upper routes, the Upper Presidio Road and the Camino Pita, were used contemporaneously but had different river and creek crossings. The locale, originally a large Payaya Indian encampment known as Yanaguana, was first described by Fray Massanet on June 13, The presence of the springs and the ease with which nearby fields could be irrigated were deciding factors in the location and founding of San Antonio in The major springs of the Balcones Escarpment, such as those in San Antonio and present-day New Braunfels, attracted not only European explorers along the Camino Real, but Indian travelers as well.

The historical routes of the Camino Real northward from San Antonio followed two separate trails that traversed south-central Texas and converged in East Texas at several crossings of the Trinity River. The upper, probably earlier, trail crossed near the springs of the San Marcos River and turned northeastward across the Blackland Prairie toward the confluence of the Little and Brazos rivers.

For much of the 18th century, the area between the San Gabriel and Trinity rivers was the home of thousands of Indians commonly allied against the Apache. The strategic location of the Indian groups and their sometimes open hostility toward Spaniards acted as an obstacle to travel for decades.

Many of these groups temporarily coalesced into missions established for them along the San Gabriel River in the mids, but they gradually moved northeastward before disappearing from the historical record by the end of the century.

By the early 19th century, a lower route developed across south-central Texas that paralleled the earlier, upper route. Austin in the s. A large portion of the trail crossed dense woodlands called the Monte Grande del Diablo southeast of the Blackland Prairie.

Below the confluence of the Blanco and San Marcos rivers near present-day San Marcos, a portion of the old road and its river crossing were identified in Share on Twitter Tweet. Share on Pinterest Share. Share on LinkedIn Share. Share on Digg Share.