The Camino Real

Duane's take

Here's my telling of what the official marker has to say about the Camino Real, right here in El Paso County. Now, some roads get paved over and forgotten. But some roads, they just refuse to leave.

The Camino Real is that kind of road. Camino Real. The Royal Road.

Say it either way, and you're saying the same thing: this was the road that mattered. For more than two hundred years, it was the main artery, the beating pulse of commerce between Mexico City and Chihuahua to the south, and Santa Fe and Taos to the north. Two hundred years of boots and hooves and wagon wheels wearing the same path into the earth.

That's not a road. That's a story carved into the ground. The first man to travel it, as far as this marker is concerned, was Juan de Onate, in 1598, during his expedition into New Mexico.

Think about that. Onate is pushing north into territory that most maps of the day probably just left blank, and the route he follows becomes the spine of a trading network that will outlast him by centuries. The road itself didn't take a simple path.

It followed the San Elizario, Socorro, and Ysleta Road, crossed the Rio Grande west of what is now downtown El Paso, and then pressed on north into New Mexico. Every one of those crossings, every one of those towns along the way, owes something to the simple fact that Onate needed a way through. Then came 1848, and the world redrew itself.

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, this ancient royal corridor, found itself on the American side of a brand new line. Two hundred years of one nation's road, and then one treaty later, it belongs to another.

The road didn't move an inch. The history, though, that took a turn.

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)