Zero Milestone / Old Spanish Trail

Duane's take

The official marker tells it this way, and I'm just the voice carryin' it down the road. Now, there are markers, and then there are markers. Most of them say: something happened here.

This one says something different. This one says: everything starts here. We're talkin' about the Zero Milestone of the Old Spanish Trail.

Zero. Not one, not ten. Zero.

The point from which the measuring begins. Stand at this spot in San Antonio, and the whole trail unspools out from under your feet in every direction. And what a trail it is.

Roll your eyes east and you're trackin' toward Houston, then on to New Orleans, then Mobile, then Pensacola, all the way to St. Augustine. Roll your eyes west and the road pulls you toward El Paso, Tucson, Yuma, and clean out to San Diego.

The Old Spanish Trail didn't fool around. It stitched two coasts together, and San Antonio sat right at the knot. Now, a zero milestone doesn't just appear on its own.

Somebody has to care enough to put it there. In this case, that somebody was the San Antonio City Federation of Women's Clubs, with Mrs. J.

K. Beretta serving as president. They erected this marker.

They made it official, made it permanent, made sure the spot would be known. And the dedication, well, that was no small affair either. Governor Pat M.

Neff himself showed up to do the honors. March 27, 1924. The governor of Texas, standing at the zero point, declaring this the place where distance begins to be counted.

There's something quietly powerful about a zero. It doesn't boast. It doesn't say look how far we've come.

It says, simply: from here. Everything you're measurin', everything you're trackin' across the width of this continent, it all goes back to here. San Antonio.

Mile zero. The Old Spanish Trail. And a group of women who decided that mattered enough to mark it in stone.

What the marker says

Zero milestone Old Spanish Trail St. Augustine Pensacola - Mobile New Orleans - Houston San Antonio El Paso - Tucson - Yuma San Diego Dedicated By Governor Pat M. Neff March 27, 1924 Erected by The San Antonio City Federation of Women's Clubs Mrs. J. K. Beretta, President