DUANE
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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.
Just saying it out loud, you can feel the weight of it, all those boots and hooves and wagon wheels wearing a path into the desert floor over more than two hundred years. This was the major route for moving commercial goods between Mexico City and Chihuahua to the north, and Santa Fe and Taos beyond that. Not a shortcut.
Not a detour. The main road. The road that mattered.
The first man recorded traveling it was Juan de Onate, during his 1598 expedition into New Mexico. Fourteen ninety-eight would have been remarkable enough, but fifteen ninety-eight, out here in this country, that is something else entirely. The road he followed ran along the San Elizario, Socorro, and Ysleta Road, crossed the Rio Grande west of what is now downtown El Paso, and pushed on north into New Mexico.
For generations, merchants and travelers and soldiers moved along that same corridor, hauling goods, carrying news, connecting distant places that had no other reliable connection. Then came 1848, and the Rio Grande was established as the boundary between the United States and Mexico. Just like that, this stretch of the old Camino Real found itself on the American side of the line.
A road that had belonged to a different country, a different world almost, was now part of the United States. The road itself never moved an inch. Everything around it just changed.
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)