The Camino Real

Duane's take

Here's how the official marker tells it, and I'll do my best to do it justice. The Camino Real. The Royal Road.

Even the name has got a certain weight to it, doesn't it. A road that carried that name for more than two hundred years, threading its way from Mexico City and Chihuahua all the way up to Santa Fe and Taos. Two hundred years of wagon wheels and boot leather, of commercial goods moving north under a wide desert sky.

That's not a road. That's a living thing. The first man to travel it, as far as the record shows, was Juan de Onate, during his 1598 expedition to New Mexico.

Fourteen ninety-eight would've been remarkable. But 1598, out here in this country, with the Rio Grande running alongside and the mountains watching from a distance, that's something else entirely. Onate followed what would become the San Elizario, Socorro, and Ysleta Road, crossed the Rio Grande west of what is now downtown El Paso, and pressed on north into New Mexico.

That crossing. Think about it for a moment. The same spot where a man planted his boots in 1598 became, over the next two centuries, the spine of commerce between two great cities to the south and two great towns to the north.

Then came 1848. The Rio Grande was established as the boundary between the United States and Mexico, and just like that, this stretch of the old Camino Real found itself on new ground, officially part of the United States. The road didn't move an inch.

The world just drew a new line around it.

What the marker says

For more than 200 years the Camino Real, or Royal Road, was the major route for transporting commercial goods from Mexico City and Chihuahua to Santa Fe and Taos. First traveled by Juan de Onate during his 1598 expedition to New Mexico, the Camino Real followed the San Elizario, Socorro, and Ysleta Road, crossed the Rio Grande west of present downtown El Paso, and continued north into New Mexico. When the Rio Grande was established as the U.S. - Mexico boundary in 1848, this section of the old Camino Real became part of the United States. (1983)