The Camino Real, King’s Highway

This is an old clapboard covered log house on Hwy 21 between San Augustine and Nacogdoches, TX. Two of the oldest towns in Texas.

I believe the structure might have changed some over the years I’ve been going by this place. Back in the 1990’s, I use to travel this road almost every day of the week while I was going to college at Stephen F. Austin State University in Nacogdoches, and I lived in Rosevine. This is a pretty stretch of highway that just seems to seep with history. Some folks know it just as Hwy 21. The locals know it as, the Old San Antonio Road. George Louis Crocket, a resident of San Augustine, TX, born there in 1861, was most likely the known authority when it came to Texas history during that time. He knew it as a trail called the Camino Real. The King’s Highway, the Royal Road. To me, it’s the highway home. To Rosevine.

According to G.L. Crocket, it is a traditional belief that Sier Louis Juchereau de St. Denis, a French explorer, was declared to be the person who laid out the trail, back in 1714. He was hired by Antoine de la Mothe Cadillac, the governor of Louisiana at the time. La Mothe wanted to develop trade with Mexico.

Crocket said that, in those days, during the time of St. Denis, the people who mainly lived in the area between the Sabine River, that now forms part of Texas’ eastern border, and the Neches River, were called the Texas Indians. The word Texas, among these people, meant “a friend,” an ally. As opposed to the wild indians who lived west of the Neches, like the Apache and Comanche, for example. The Spaniards knew the area by this term, and called it the Great Kingdom of Texas. The land of the Hasinai confederation, made up of twelve tribes, and their brothers, the Caddo. It was the trails between their villages, heading west, that St. Denis utilized, and formed what we now call, the King’s Highway.

It was down this road, people like John Salmon Ford, also known as Rip Ford, would travel. He came from Tennessee, like many other people that came to Texas around the 1830s seeking their fortune. And men like Davy Crockett, the famous frontiersman, soldier, and politician, who came out of eastern Tennessee, and fought at the battle of the Alamo, against Santa Anna, during the Texas Revolution. Sam Houston, who came down this road, was once the governor of Tennessee, U.S. Representative from Tennessee, and distinguished soldier. He would later command not only the Texian Army during the Texas Revolution, but personally commanded the Texan forces at the Battle of San Jacinto, where Santa Anna was defeated. Sam Houston went on to become the first, and third, President of Texas. After Texas entered into the Union, he served as the U.S. Senator from Texas. Then, he was elected to serve as the governor of Texas. But, for a while, he served as a member of the Texas House of Representatives, from the San Augustine district, a little town on the Camino Real. This was during the same time John Salmon Ford practiced medicine in San Augustine, for eight years, before he later went on to become one of the Texas Rangers who was most feared by the Comanches. He would fight the Comanches with the same ruthless spirit, with their own tactics, and with men who had the same determination. During the Civil War, he raised troops and defended Texas against Mexican invaders. An in May 1865, he led Confederate troops in the last battle of the American Civil War, on south Texas soil, against Union troops, and defeated them. Ford was also responsible for scouting out, and mapping, the Ford and Neighbors Trail, between Austin and El Paso. An important trail that could be traversed in twenty days on horseback, and would later be used by thousands of emigrants headed to the California gold fields.

And a little over 100 years ago, it was just a few miles from the Camino Real, about five miles down Highway 1, in Sabine County, that my grandmother, also from Tennessee, came to live in Texas. My father is the youngest of her ten children. At last count, Granny and Papa have well over 300 descendants, maybe 400 now. Like me, most of them have moved off to places elsewhere. San Augustine and Sabine counties are still low key when it comes to economy. But, my Mom and Dad still live there. A little place called Rosevine. And one day, I hope, it will be down that road, the Camino Real, that I travel again. Back to my childhood home.