Goliad Road

Duane's take

The way I hear it, this comes straight from the official marker, so let me tell you about a road that was already old when your great-great-grandmother's great-great-grandmother was young. The Goliad Road. Right here in Bexar County, where it crossed Salado Creek and ran alongside the Gonzales Road on its way into San Antonio.

Spain established this road around 1720, and they gave it a name that meant business: El Camino Real a La Bahia del Espiritu Santo. The King's Highway to Goliad. Now say that three times fast around a campfire.

For a hundred and fifty years, that road carried emigrants, soldiers, and traders. A hundred and fifty years. Think about that the next time you're stuck in traffic.

It became part of the Chihuahua Road, a route that stitched together the Texas Gulf Coast and Mexico into one long commercial lifeline. And here is where the story gets genuinely wide. The people who traveled this road were not exactly a small and quiet group.

Indians walked it. Spanish soldiers marched it. Mexican forces used it for their campaigns.

Then came soldiers of the Republic of Texas, then the United States, then the Confederacy. Every government that ever had a claim on this corner of the continent sent boots or hooves or wagon wheels down this same stretch of dirt. The same road.

All of them. There is something almost dizzying about standin near a place like that, knowing the ground remembers all of it. And that road just kept on carrying whoever needed carrying, decade after decade, right up until the railroads came to Texas.

That was what finally did it. Not war, not weather, not the wearing down of time. Railroads.

And even then, it only diminished. Some roads, friend, just don't fully quit.

What the marker says

Established about 1720 by Spain as "El Camino Real a La Bahia del Espiritu Santo" ("King's Highway to Goliad"). Served for 150 years as a major emigrant, military, and trade road. Became segment of the Chihuahua Road, which connected the Texas Gulf Coast and Mexico. Indians, soldiers from Spain, Mexico, the Republic of Texas, the United States and Confederacy used road for their campaigns. In this vicinity the Goliad Road crossed Salado Creek and paralleled the Gonzales Road in the approach to San Antonio. Its traffic diminished only after railroads came to Texas.