As part of a regional interpretative planning process, the Webb County Heritage Foundation (WCHF) is hosting a public meeting in collaboration with El Camino Real de los Tejas National Historic Trail Association on Thursday, August 24 from 10 a.m. to 12 noon at the Villa Antigua® Border Heritage Museum, 810 Zaragoza St.
The link to sign up for this stakeholder session is https://tinyurl.com/3sxyhbej or contact Melanie Mae, Conservation By Design at melanie@conservationbydesign.com. Walk-ins are also welcome.
The National Park Service has commissioned this interpretive plan for El Camino Real de los Tejas National Historic Trail. As valued stakeholders, Laredoans are invited to contribute their perspectives on how to improve the visitor experience along the Trail as well as the interpretive products and programs that tell the stories of El Camino Real across all of the associated sites.
The discussion topics will include principles of effective interpretation, visitor experiences of the Trail, improving Trail awareness, Trail stories and locations, and partner collaboration.
The National Park Service website states that “El Camino Real de los Tejas National Historic Trail is administered by the National Park Service as a component of the National Trails System. The National Park Service administers the trail in partnership with El Camino Real de los Tejas Trail Association, American Indian tribes, state, county, and municipal governmental agencies, private landowners, nonprofit heritage conservation groups, and many others. Trail sites are in private, municipal, tribal, federal, or state ownership.”
According to the National Park Service, “During the Spanish colonial period in North America, numerous “royal roads”— or caminos reales — tied far-flung regions of the empire to Mexico City. One particular collection of indigenous trails and trade routes became known as El Camino Real de los Tejas, the primary overland route for the Spanish colonization of what is today Texas and northwestern Louisiana. The trail’s name is derived not only from its geographic extent but also from some of its original users. Spaniards referred to a prominent group of Caddo Indians as the Tejas, a word derived from the Caddo term for ‘friend’ or ‘ally.’ Thus, the Spanish province of Tejas, the Mexican state of Coahuila y Tejas, and the historic trail traversing them owe their name to the Caddo language.
El Camino Real de los Tejas served as a political, economic, and cultural link between Mexico City and Los Adaes (and all points in between). Settlers, missionaries, soldiers, servants, and indigenous allies followed various roads and trails along the 2,500 miles of this route to populate the settlements, missions, and presidios of eastern Texas and northwestern Louisiana. Linking a variety of cultural and linguistic groups, the royal road served as an agent for cultural diffusion, biological exchange, and communication and as a conduit for exploration, trade, migration, settlement, and livestock drives. Spanish, Mexican, French, American, Black, and American Indian travelers along El Camino Real de los Tejas created a mix of traditions, laws, and cultures that is reflected in the people, landscapes, place names, languages, music, and arts of Texas and Louisiana today.
For more information, contact the Webb County Heritage Foundation at (956) 727-0977.
