El Camino Real - Anthony, NM - Wagon Roads and Trails on Waymarking.com

El Camino Real means "The Royal Road," for which travel was controlled by the King of Spain or his representatives, and thus often called the "King's Highway." These royal roads ran throughout the Spanish Empire including Mexico to South America, and later to California, to administer the empire.

What is today's New Mexico was once part of the Spanish empire and called Nueva España or New Spain. The majority of Spain's settlement were along the Rio Grande and around their capital city of Santa Fe.

El Camino Real was the road that connected Spain and Mexico City to the settlements in the "interior lands" of Nueva España. For this reason, the Camino Real to New Mexico was called El Camino Real de Tierra Adentro - the Royal Road to the Interior Lands. Used for over 300 years from 1598 until the late 1800s, this was the oldest and longest used of the royal roads.

All colonists, the Spanish military, Franciscan priests, and the constant flow of supply wagons came to New Mexico over El Camino Real.

Spain controlled New Spain with an iron fist from 1598-1823. Nobody was allowed into the new territory without written permission. Even when the United States became a country in 1776

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http://www.elcaminoreal.org/Info/info_004.htm

For 300 years, El Camino Real was the only road into New Mexico and the Southwest, bringing thousands of settlers from Mexico and Spain into the region. Even the famed Santa Fe Trail did not come along until 1821, connecting New Mexico to the United States for the first time. This is why so many of the people in New Mexico today are of early Mexican or Spanish decent. It was their ancestors that settled along the Rio Grande by way of the long, dusty trail called El Camino Real.