Once it crosses the Trinity River heading east, State Highway 21 spans the wide Mustang Prairie then creeps past sleepy towns and through dense pine forests to the state line, where it becomes Louisiana Highway 6.
In the past century, countless trucks and cars have traveled the route. But in recent years, passengers—especially history buffs—may have noticed new road signs popping up along State Highway 21 proclaiming it part of El Camino Real de los Tejas National Historic Trail.
This designation from the National Park Service honors the highway’s legacy as one of America’s most significant ancient trails. The historic route enabled the development of Texas and much of the Southwest. Archaeological research along the trail continues to uncover trail segments that have gone undiscovered for centuries, hiding in plain sight.
For more than 330 years, many groups traveled El Camino Real, which translates to “the King’s Highway” or “the Royal Road.” Native American groups, Spanish missionaries and military expeditions, French traders, Mexican and Texian soldiers and settlers, and American immigrants traveled the ancient path, seeking new lives on the frontier.
Decades of research has uncovered artifacts of their travels, such as pottery pieces, military buttons and coins buried in the landscape.
“When archaeological work dovetails with historical accounts, researchers can detail the rich history of those diverse travelers,” says Steven Gonzales, executive director of El Camino Real de los Tejas National Historic Trail Association. In partnership with the park service; governmental, historical and tourism groups; and landowners, the nonprofit works to protect and develop the venerable passageway.
“That’s important, because without El Camino Real de los Tejas, there is no Texas,” explains Gonzales.
Struggle for Power
In the 17th and 18th centuries, Texas was a frontier Spanish province. To the west lay Spain’s rich holdings in colonial Mexico and beyond. To the east lay its European rival, France, which claimed Louisiana.
The king of Spain ordered Spanish soldiers to build presidios (forts) to deter French encroachment. He also charged Franciscan friars with establishing missions to convert to Christianity the Caddo people who had lived for centuries in the Pineywoods of East Texas and Louisiana.
One particular Caddo group was known as the Tejas, a Spanish spelling of a Caddo word for friend, techas. The Spanish word Tejas would, of course, later be respelled as Texas.
Construction of Spanish missions and presidios required a 2,500-mile supply trail that would become known as El Camino Real de los Tejas. Rather than a singular trail, the road was more a network of wilderness paths pieced together from existing buffalo trails and long-standing indigenous trade routes.
The route connected well-used watering holes to burned-out campfire sites. Markings blazed on trees pointed out low-water crossings and high points where travelers could watch for danger.
Changes in season, varying river levels, economic conditions and military activities caused the trail to be altered many times over many decades. Still, during the Spanish colonial era, El Camino Real remained the only overland route from the Rio Grande River to the provincial capital of Texas at Los Adaes, near present-day Robeline, Louisiana. Los Adaes was the capital from the 1720s to the early 1770s.
A state historical marker provides information about the history of the 19th-century Rice Cabin at Mission Tejas State Park near Weches.
A young family visits and reads about the replica church honoring the first mission in East Texas, located at Mission Tejas State Park at Weches.
By 1772, Spain and France had normalized relations, and efforts to convert native groups to Christianity had failed. The eastern frontier forts and missions were abandoned and relocated to South Texas. In 1803 the Louisiana Purchase made the U.S. the threatening neighbor on New Spain’s eastern border. Revolution in the 1820s overthrew Spanish control and created the Republic of Mexico.
For New Spain and for Mexico, dominion over Texas proved elusive during the early 1800s as more American settlers arrived and built farms and settlements along El Camino Real. Important figures of the day—including Moses Austin and his son Stephen F. Austin, Jim Bowie, Davy Crockett, and Sam Houston—entered Texas via the Royal Road.
During Texas’ revolution against Mexico in the 1830s, armies of both sides marched up and down the trail. After the Republic of Texas became a U.S. state in 1845, El Camino Real de los Tejas and other newer routes dispersed a surge of American settlers across the Lone Star State.
In 1915 the Texas Legislature commissioned surveyor V.N. Zivley to retrace and mark El Camino’s route. Using Zivley’s maps, the Daughters of the American Revolution placed commemorative granite milestones along the route. Those markers are still visible today.
The Legislature also directed the Department of Transportation to preserve and maintain the road that largely follows State Highway 21.
To celebrate the route’s 300th birthday, in 1991, the Legislature authorized new archaeological research, which concluded that Zivley’s map route was only one of at least five routes used at different times.
In Geneva, along State Highway 21, Lobanillo Swales offers walks along original trails of the ancient El Camino Real.
A tell-tale swale at Mission Tejas State Park marks a stretch of the El Camino Real.
Remnants of History
Dozens of landmarks retell history along El Camino Real, including a number of East Texas sites along State Highway 21.
Mission Tejas State Park in the Davy Crockett National Forest near Weches boasts two structures. A replica log church built in 1934 by the Depression-era Civilian Conservation Corps commemorates Mission San Francisco de los Tejas, established in 1690 as New Spain’s first mission in Texas. Nearby lies the 1838 log home of early pioneers Joseph and Willie Masters Rice, which served as a stagecoach inn.
Follow the highway across the Neches River a few miles east toward Alto, and travelers will find the ceremonial center of the ancient mound-building Caddo culture. Several mounds rise from Caddo Mounds State Historic Site, which offers a new interpretive center and replica grass house rebuilt after a destructive tornado in 2019. The site is also home of the annual Caddo Culture Day, November 2 this year, which demonstrates Caddo music, dance, food and crafts.
A bit farther down the trail, at the campus of Stephen F. Austin University in Nacogdoches, rises a two-story stone structure dating to Spanish Texas. The original structure was built as a trading center by Antonio Gil Y’Barbo, a leader of the Spanish colonists, to store American goods used in trade with Native Americans.
The so-called Old Stone Fort was torn down in 1902, but in 1936, the Texas Centennial Commission built a replica using the original iron-ore stones. The building now houses the Stone Fort Museum, where visitors can learn about Spanish Texas history.
Another trader on the King’s Highway, German immigrant Adolphus Sterne, built a fine home in Nacogdoches, where it served as the social center of early East Texas. The restored 1830 dogtrot house now houses the Sterne-Hoya House Museum and Library, which displays period memorabilia and family history.
Midway between San Augustine and Nacogdoches stands a large two-story log and clapboard structure that served as a stagecoach stop during the Republic of Texas. Known as the Halfway Inn, it was built for Mississippi planter Samuel Martin Flournoy and has been restored by local citizens.
San Augustine is known for its many historic homes, but it’s also home to the site of Misión de Nuestra Señora de los Dolores de los Ais, a Spanish mission built in 1721 on El Camino Real. The original route passes through today’s Mission Dolores State Historic Site, which offers a small museum exploring the Ais people and the Mission Dolores.
A rare archaeological site east of San Augustine near the community of Geneva in Sabine County contains the largest concentration of physical evidence ever found along the El Camino Real. Several U-shaped depressions, or swales, mark deep parallel trenches, 12 feet wide and up to 18 feet deep. These road remnants were worn into the landscape over centuries by thousands of people, animals, carts and wagons.
A 25-foot-diameter traditional grass house is on display at Caddo Mounds State Historic Site. The site protects and interprets the remnants of a Neches Valley village occupied by the Caddo people.
The site is called Lobanillo Swales, named for the nearby location of Lobanillo Ranch, where Gil Y’Barbo and other Spanish refugees lived in the late 1700s.
New signage from the trail association interprets the trail and helps travelers explore the swales on foot.
“We have found swales here that have never been found before,” says Gonzales. “Putting together archaeological and historical research, we are filling out the full history of this national historic trail.”
Gonzales says that the trail association is undertaking a similar project in Milam County at Red Mountain, the site of the origin story of the Tonkawa Tribe.
The trail association also started an annual El Camino Real Day celebration, during which sites along the route host events to spotlight the trail’s significance. The celebration is held the first Saturday on or after October 18, the designation date of the national historic trail.
“We think the more people are aware of the historic trail, the more it will encourage them to help protect remaining remnants,” Gonzales says. “Historic trails belong to all of us. Appreciating them is a good way to see our own history as part of the broader history we all share. That knowledge can help bring people together.”
For more information, visit elcaminorealdelostejas.org and nps.gov/elte.
To learn more about the Caddo people and their traditions, read the February 2019 Texas Co-op Power issue by visiting SamHouston.net and then navigating to the Texas Co-op Power link under the News tab.
