Casillas de Camineros

Casillas de Camineros[1] is the name in Spanish given to structures built every 6 kilometers during the latter part of the 19th century alongside the major roads built in Puerto Rico and provided as residences to the camineros, specially-trained government workers charged with providing maintenance to the surface of approximately six kilometers of a major road.

[2] Forty-seven casillas were built, all by the Spanish government in Puerto Rico.

[3] The road with the largest number of casillas was the Ponce-San Juan road, then known as Carretera Central; it had 33 casillas.

The casilla on Avenida Tito Castro in Ponce was designed by Manuel Maese and built by Eduardo Armstrong in 1886.

[4] Abandoned in the latter part of the 20th century, the structures have faced different fates.