El Camino Real (California) facts for kids

El Camino Real (which means The Royal Road or The King's Highway in Spanish) is a famous historic road in California. It's about 600 miles (965 kilometers) long. This important road connected 21 Spanish missions, four forts called presidios, and three towns known as pueblos.

The road stretched from the Mission San Diego de Alcalá in San Diego in the south. It went all the way up to the Mission San Francisco Solano in Sonoma, which is just north of San Francisco Bay.

In early Spanish times, any road directly controlled by the Spanish king was called a camino real. These roads connected important settlements across Spain and its colonies, like New Spain (which included California). After Mexico became independent from Spain, the name camino real was rarely used. It became popular again in the early 1900s because people were interested in the history of the missions.

Today, many streets in California that follow or run next to this old route are still called "El Camino Real." Some parts of the original road have even been made into modern freeways. You can also find special bell markers along the route that help people remember this historic path.

What is the History of El Camino Real?

A map of California from 1850 showing the old routes.

How Did the Spanish Missions Create the Road?

Between 1683 and 1834, Jesuit and Franciscan missionaries built many religious outposts. These missions stretched from what is now Baja California and Baja California Sur in Mexico, into present-day California.

In Alta California (which is now the U.S. state of California), El Camino Real followed two main paths. These paths were first explored by Spanish expeditions. The first was the Portolá Expedition in 1769. This group included Franciscan missionaries, led by Junípero Serra.

Serra started the first of the 21 missions in San Diego. He stayed there, while Juan Crespí and Gaspar de Portolá continued north. Portolá tried to follow the coastline (like today's California State Route 1). However, sometimes they had to go inland because of cliffs.

The expedition eventually reached the entrance to San Francisco Bay, known as the Golden Gate. They could not go any farther north. Crespí noted several places that would later become mission sites. On their way back to San Diego, Portolá found a shorter way around some coastal cliffs through the Conejo Valley.

Portolá traveled again from San Diego to Monterey in 1770. Junipero Serra arrived by ship and founded the second mission there. This mission was later moved a short distance south to Carmel. Carmel became Serra's main mission headquarters in Alta California.

The second important journey was the Juan Bautista de Anza expedition (1775–76). This group entered Alta California from the southeast, crossing the Colorado River. They joined Portolá's trail at Mission San Gabriel Arcángel. De Anza's scouts found it easier to travel through several inland valleys instead of staying on the rough coast.

On his trip north, de Anza traveled through the San Fernando Valley and Salinas Valley. After visiting the Presidio of Monterey on the coast, de Anza went inland again. He followed the Santa Clara Valley to the southern end of San Francisco Bay. Then he went up the east side of the San Francisco Peninsula. This became the preferred route for El Camino Real. It is very similar to today's U.S. Route 101.

To make travel easier, the mission settlements were built about 30 miles (48 kilometers) apart. This meant they were about one long day's ride on horseback along the 600-mile (966-kilometer) El Camino Real. This road was also known as the California Mission Trail. Heavy goods were usually moved by water, not by land.

There's a story that the padres (mission priests) sprinkled mustard seeds along the trail. This was to mark the path with bright yellow flowers. It created a "golden trail" from San Diego to Sonoma. The Camino Real was a very important land route connecting the 21 Spanish missions of Alta-California.

Where Does the Commemorative Trail Go Today?

Mission San Miguel seen from the road on the current "commemorative route" of the Camino Real.

Today, several modern highways follow parts of the historic El Camino Real. However, large sections are now city streets, especially between San Jose and San Francisco. The full modern route, as decided by the California State Legislature, is listed below:

Destinations	Notes
Interstate 5	From the U.S.-Mexico border to Anaheim
Anaheim Boulevard, Harbor Boulevard, State Route 72 and Whittier Boulevard	From Anaheim to Whittier
Valley Boulevard in El Monte to Mission Drive in Rosemead Mission Drive in Rosemead to East Mission Road in San Gabriel East Mission Road in San Gabriel to West Mission Road in Alhambra (at the San Gabriel Mission) West Mission Road in Alhambra to Alhambra Avenue in Los Angeles Alhambra Avenue in Los Angeles to Valley Boulevard in Los Angeles Valley Boulevard in Los Angeles to U.S. Route 101	From Whittier to Los Angeles
US 101 north (State Route 87) to SR 87 north – Santa Clara County	From Los Angeles to San Jose
State Route 82	From San Jose to San Francisco
Interstate 280	Within San Francisco
U.S. Route 101	From San Francisco to Novato
State Route 37	From Novato to Sears Point
State Route 121	From Sears Point to Sonoma
State Route 12	Within Sonoma

East Bay route

Some older local roads that run parallel to these routes also have the name. Many streets across California are now called "El Camino Real," even if they don't exactly follow the original path. However, Mission Street in San Francisco does follow the historical route. A part of the old, unpaved road is still preserved east of Mission San Juan Bautista. This section runs next to the San Andreas Fault, where you can clearly see the ground drop several feet.

Today, the route through San Mateo and Santa Clara counties is called State Route 82. Some parts of it are named El Camino Real. This old road is part of the de Anza route, located a few miles east of Route 101.

What Are the Historic Designations for El Camino Real?

El Camino Real is recognized as California Historical Landmark #784. There are two state historical markers that honor the road. One is near Mission San Diego de Alcalá in San Diego, and the other is near Mission San Francisco de Asís in San Francisco.

How Did the Commemorative Bell-Markers Start?

A historical marker bell along El Camino Real.

In 1892, a woman named Anna Pitcher from Pasadena, California started an effort to preserve the route of Alta California's Camino Real. The California Federation of Women's Clubs took up this idea in 1902. Modern El Camino Real was one of California's first state highways.

Because there were no standard road signs back then, people decided to place special bells along the route. These bells hung on supports shaped like an 11-foot (3.4 m) tall shepherd's crook, which also looked like a Franciscan walking stick. Mrs. A.S.C. Forbes designed the bells and owned the California Bell Company, where they were made.

The first of 450 bells were put up on August 15, 1906. They were placed at the Plaza Church in Los Angeles, near Olvera Street.

The group that first installed the bells eventually broke apart. The Automobile Club of Southern California and other groups took care of the bells from the mid-1920s to 1931. The State of California took over maintaining the bells in 1933.

Many bells disappeared over time due to vandalism, theft, or because roads were moved. After the number of bells dropped to about 80, the State began replacing them. At first, they used concrete, and later iron. A design from 1960 by Justin Kramer of Los Angeles was used until the California Department of Transportation (Caltrans) started a restoration project in 1996.

Keith Robinson, a landscape architect at Caltrans, created a program to restore the El Camino Real bells. This led to 555 new bell markers being installed by 2005. Each bell marker has a 460 mm (18 inch) metal bell on top of a pipe column. The original bell molds from 1906 were used to make the new bells. The California Bell Company produced both the original and replacement bells. They are usually marked "1769 & 1906." The year 1769 is when the first Alta-California mission was founded in San Diego. The year 1906 is when the first commemorative bell marker was placed.

For some Native American groups, these bells are a painful reminder of how their ancestors were treated. They see the bells as a symbol of their culture being taken away. The Amah Mutsun Tribal Band has explained to local authorities that the bells represent historical unfairness and oppression for their people. Because of this, a bell at the University of California, Santa Cruz was removed by campus officials in June 2019.

This issue also came up when statues of Junípero Serra were damaged or removed in 2020 during the George Floyd protests. These protests expanded to include monuments of people connected to the difficult history of how indigenous peoples were treated in the Americas. The historical preservation commission of Santa Cruz told the city council in November 2020 that the bells represent a painful history for the city's indigenous people. A bell in Mission Park Plaza had been stolen in 1999 and was not replaced. The city was considering removing the last bell at a street intersection.

Images for kids

• 

  Alhambra station along Mission Road in Alhambra in 1973

• 

  Stretch of El Camino Real at Rios-Caledonia Adobe San Miguel.

See also

In Spanish: Camino Real de California para niños