On Florida's Camino Real
only remnants remain
En español: En el Camino Real de Florida solo quedan restos
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By Miguel Pérez
Whenever Spanish explorers established a trail between the Spanish and Indian villages they built in North America, long before the British arrived, they said the trail was "royal," in recognition of their allegiance to the Spanish monarchy. Every important trail was a "Camino Real," or "Royal Road," and that's why we still have several such major Caminos on the U.S. mainland today, in California, Arizona, New Mexico, Texas and Florida. These were mostly centuries-old native American trails adopted and named by the Spanish. After thousands of years of foot traffic, these paths formed lower tracts of lands known by archaeologists as swales. But they were royal once the Spanish traveled on them in the 16th and 17th centuries. |
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The one that covers Mexico, a small portion of Texas and most of New Mexico is known as "El Camino Real de Tierra Adentro," or The Royal Road of the Interior." The one that cuts west-to-east across Texas into Louisiana is called "El Camino Real de los Tejas." The "Camino Real de California" begins in Mexico, cuts across southern Arizona and cover most of California. The "Camino Real de La Florida" cuts northern Florida. All four were thick Indian and Hispanic arteries that flowed through the American countryside. Some still take you to important places!
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If you are familiar with the Camino Real in California, you know that it connects the remaining 21 Spanish missions still there, and that highway signs and decorative bells still tell you when you are on El Camino. You also see signs on roads connecting some of the remaining Spanish missions in New Mexico and Texas. But in Florida, where the first royal road once connected dozens of Spanish missions from St. Augustine to Tallahassee, the missions have long disappeared, and so has El Camino Real.
In contrast to other states, where some Spanish missions remain active parishes, and serve as small museums, except for the reconstructed Mission San Luis Living History Museum in Tallahassee, there are no original Spanish missions left in Florida today, not even standing ruins! Since they were constructed of impermanent materials, there are only scant remnants of the missions and the camino that once linked them. There are large and colorful historical markers recognizing "La Florida's El Camino Real" in St. Augustine, at Ichetucknee Springs State Park, and in the reconstructed Mission San Luis in Tallahassee. But there are no road signs, because there is no designated road tracing the route of El Camino. |
Red bells represent approximate locations of known Spanish missions.
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"Today there are very few remnants of the original Spanish road visible in our state," the makers say. "Our best evidence of the camino comes from historic documents combined with mission archaeology to verify the locations of missions along the route."
Although historians believe there were more than 100 Spanish missions in Florida, the markers feature a map which estimates the approximate location of the "known Spanish missions," and the Camino that connected them. |
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For those who followed El Camino, the missions provided food and shelter. "The missions connected by the camino served as way-stations for travelers," the markers explains. "Christianized Indians were responsible for transporting most of the goods and animals overland, and they provided ferry service across the rivers. The trip from St. Augustine to Apalachee Province, near present-day Tallahassee, could take anywhere from four days in the winter to over a month in the rainy season when the rivers were high and the pinelands flooded."
Can you imagine? My GPS says that's some 208 miles on today's roads and my SUB can do it 3 hours and 21 minutes! lol And that's obeying the speed limit! |
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The identical markers also explains that in 1680, Florida's Spanish Governor, Diego de Quiroga y Losada, contracted an engineer to build a formal road across northern Florida "that was suitable for oxcarts." And although the project was only partially completed, "people and goods continued to flow to and from the capital at St. Augustine, along the main corridor known as The Camino Real." In fact, the part that was finished did not reach St. Augustine. It stretched from Mission San Luis in Tallahassee to Mission San Francisco de Potano, near today's Gainesville. The rest of the way to St. Augustine remained unfinished, as a narrow and rougher dirt road.
Eventually, El Camino was extended west to Pensacola, still as a dirt road, and there were proposals to keep it going all the way to Mexico, which never materialized. |
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Historians speculate that when Spanish and Indian travelers came to St. Augustine on El Camino, they probably entered the town at the north end of today's St. George Street, where the City Gate was built later on.
Since the missions were established in native villages, there was no mission within the town of St. Augustine. But just north of town was Mission Nombre de Dios, where travelers could also stop. Founded in 1565 and considered the oldest Franciscan mission on the U.S. mainland, Nombre de Dios is now a beautiful waterfront park with a church, a museum, the historic Shrine of Nuestra Señora de la Leche, and "The Great Cross." (See photos). |
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On the east end of El Camino, Mission Nombre de Dios housed the Timucua natives, and at the west end, Mission San Luis was the home of the Apalachees, two northern Florida tribes that maintained friendly relations with Spanish settlers. As I explained in my last article, unlike the other missions, in San Luis, the Spanish and the Appalachian people lived together.
But the Spanish missions, as well as the camino that connected them, came under attack by British forces and their native allies starting in 1702. By 1706, all of the Florida missions were abandoned or destroyed. |
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The town barely survived the 1702, two-month "Siege of St. Augustine" by British forces from Carolina, mostly because its 1,500 residents and soldiers were able to take refuge in the impenetrable Castillo de San Marcos But Mission Nombre de Dios was not so lucky. It was ravished and burned by the attackers after its residents also took refuge in the Castillo.
Most of the other missions suffered similar endings. Northern Florida has many missions “known only through colonial era documents and mission archaeology,” according to the website of the Florida Department of State Division of Historical Resources, which is the sponsor of the El Camino historical markers. Their site explains that after Florida's Spanish missions were abandoned or destroyed in the early 1700s, the path of Florida's Camino Real was "mostly lost." |
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Yet guided by El Camino's two endings, the two biggest settlements which had not been forgotten — St. Augustine and San Luis — archaeologists and historians have been able to reconstruct the general path of the Camino by locating many of the missions.
In my search for our Hidden Hispanic Heritage in the United States, I have traveled on the remaining Camino Reales and visited many missions. Take a look: • There Was Compassion On the Spanish Mission Trail • Time Portals on the Road • Our journey begins at La Jornada • Mission La Purisima Concepcion Going back in time to Spanish California • A trip back in time, to colonial Spanish Florida |
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