El Camino Real
From Palo Alto Wiki
El Camino Real (Spanish for The Royal Road, also known as The King's Highway) usually refers to the 600-mile (966-kilometer) California Mission Trail, connecting the former Alta California's 21 missions (along with a number of support sites), 4 presidios, and several pueblos, stretching from Mission San Diego de Alcalá in San Diego in the south to Mission San Francisco Solano in Sonoma in the north.
In fact, any road under the direct jurisdiction of the Spanish crown and its viceroys was a "camino real". Examples of such roads ran between principal settlements throughout Spain and its colonies such as New Spain. Most caminos reales had names apart from the appended "camino real". Once Mexico won its independence from Spain, no road in Mexico, including California, was any longer a camino real. The name was rarely used after that and was only revived in the American period in connection with the boosterism associated with the Mission Revival movement of the early 20th century.
The route originated near the southernmost tip of Baja California Sur in Mexico, at the site of Misión San Bruno in San Bruno (the first mission established in Las Californias), though it was only maintained as far south as Loreto.
[edit] History
Between 1683 and 1834, Spanish missionaries established a series of religious outposts throughout the present-day U.S. State of California and the present-day Mexican states of Baja California and Baja California Sur. In order to facilitate overland travel, the mission settlements were situated approximately 30 miles (48 kilometers) apart, so that they were separated by one day's long ride on horseback along the 600-mile (966-kilometer) long El Camino Real (Spanish for "The Royal Highway," though often referred to in the later Anglo American embellished translation, "The King's Highway"), and also known as the California Mission Trail. (The actual Spanish expression for "King's Highway" is "carretera del rey".) Heavy freight movement was practical only via water. Tradition has it that the padres sprinkled mustard seeds along the trail in order to mark it with bright yellow flowers.
In 1912, the State of California began paving a section of the historic route in San Mateo County. Construction of a two-lane concrete highway began in front of the historic Uncle Tom's Cabin, an inn in San Bruno that was built in 1849 and demolished exactly 100 years later. There was little traffic initially and local children used the pavement for roller skating until traffic increased. By the late 1920s, the State of California began the first of numerous widening projects of what later became part of U.S. Highway 101; today the route through San Mateo and Santa Clara counties is designated as California Highway 82.
