DUANE
Duane's take
Here's my telling of what the official marker has to say about the Camino Real de San Saba in Kendall County — so settle in, because this road has some stories to tell. Now, most roads earn their reputation one traveler at a time. This one earned it over centuries.
Beginning in the seventeen hundreds, the Camino Real de San Saba stretched northwest out of San Antonio, pushing through the Comanche and Apache-dominated Hill Country — and friend, that is not a casual detail — all the way to a Spanish fort on the San Saba River called Presidio San Luis de las Amarillas. That was the destination. Getting there was the adventure.
In 1767, a man named Joseph de Urrutia drew a portion of this trail onto a Spanish-era map of the San Antonio Presidio. Somebody thought it was worth recording, and he wasn't wrong. The road picked up another name along the way, showing up in later documents as Camino Viejo — Spanish for Old Trail.
When a road gets called the Old Trail, you know it's been around long enough to earn some respect. The Presidio San Luis de las Amarillas officially closed in 1772, but the trail didn't close with it. Roads have a way of outlasting the reasons they were built.
Now here's a wrinkle. A few miles to the east ran the Pinta Trail, and for a while, the Pinta had the bigger reputation — overshadowing the Camino San Saba in popularity. But both pathways served the same purpose: cutting a route into the Hill Country for Spanish Entradas, early explorers, and later settlers.
Two roads, same stubborn destination. Alwin Sorgel put it plainly when he wrote in 1847 — and I'm going to quote him here because he said it better than I could — "there were two roads from San Antonio into the grant, the Camino Viejo going in a westerly direction and the Pindas Trail going in a northerly direction. The Indians used these trails for centuries." Centuries.
Let that word sit with you a moment. Three years after Sorgel wrote those words, German cartographer Hermann Willke drew an 1850 map showing both trails. And the surveyors were paying attention too.
John "Jack" Coffee Hays and John James both worked this ground, and their field notes and maps contributed to documenting and preserving the historic road's alignment through Kendall County. These were men who understood that knowing where a road had been was just as important as knowing where it was going. That same John James, years later, partnered with Gustav Theisen to plat a town.
In 1852, they laid out Boerne's Main Plaza — and the Camino Real de San Saba came down the hill and passed a half-mile west of it. The road was already old when the town was new. From there the path threaded through a pre-Boerne settlement, pressed further north, went through Spanish Pass, and crossed the Guadalupe River at the spot where Brownsboro sprang up.
German settlers had been traveling both roads from the eighteen forties onward, following the same lines that Spanish soldiers and indigenous peoples had worn into the earth long before anyone thought to draw them on a map. That's the thing about a good road — it doesn't ask who made it. It just keeps going.
And this one, in one form or another, still does.
What the marker says
Beginning in the 1700s, the Camino Real de San Saba extended northwest from San Antonio through the Comanche and Apache-dominated Hill Country to the Spanish fort on the San Saba River named Presidio San Luis de las Amarillas. A portion of the trail was drawn on a Spanish-era map of the San Antonio Presidio in 1767 by Joseph de Urrutia. The path also became known as Camino Viejo (Spanish for “Old Trail”) in later documents. The San Saba Presidio officially closed in 1772. Camino Real de San Saba and the Pinta Trail were two useful pathways into the Hill Country for Spanish Entradas, early explorers and later settlers. Early surveyors, including John “Jack” Coffee Hays and John James contributed to the documentation and preservation of the historic road’s alignment through their field notes and maps in Kendall County. The Pinta Trail a few miles to the east initially overshadowed the Camino San Saba in popularity, but both were used by German settlers from the 1840s onward. Alwin Sorgel recorded in 1847 that “there were two roads from San Antonio into the grant, the Camino Viejo going in a westerly direction and the Pindas Trail going in a northerly direction. The Indians used these trails for centuries.” German cartographer Hermann Willke drew an 1850 map depicting both trails. Camino real San Saba came down this hill and passed a half-mile west of Boerne’s Main Plaza, platted in 1852 by partners Gustav Theisen and John James. From there the pathway threaded a pre-Boerne settlement and further north, after going through Spanish Pass, crossed the Guadalupe River where Brownsboro sprang up.