DUANE
Get the App
Duane's take
Here's how the official marker tells it, and I'm gonna give it to you straight. There's a road out here in El Paso County that's older than just about anything you can think of, and it's got a name that sounds like it ought to be carved in gold. The Camino Real.
The Royal Road. For more than two hundred years, that road was the main artery connecting Mexico City and Chihuahua all the way north to Santa Fe and Taos. Commercial goods, moving across some of the most punishing terrain on the continent, following that one corridor, back and forth, for generation after generation.
Two hundred years. Let that sit with you a moment. The first man to travel it, according to the marker, was Juan de Onate, during his 1598 expedition to New Mexico.
Fifteen ninety-eight. That's before the Pilgrims, before the English colonies, before almost everything most folks learned about in school. Onate came through, and the road that followed him became the Camino Real.
The route itself tracked 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 mattered more than people might have guessed at the time, because in 1848 the Rio Grande was established as the boundary between the United States and Mexico. And just like that, this stretch of the old Royal Road, this ancient corridor of commerce and expeditions, became part of the United States.
The same road. The same dirt. Just a different country standing on it now.
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)