El Camino Real (Florida)

Before this time, transpeninsular traffic in La Florida between the western mission settlements and the capital depended on water routes from Apalachee to St. Augustine.

His suggestion was disregarded, since the route he proposed went through the territories of unchristianized Indians who were not always on friendly terms with the Spanish, while the situado, in the form of silver coins,[4] would have to be carried by burderners across the swamps, forests, and sizable bays and rivers of the Gulf of Mexico coast, which barred the passage of wagons or royal mule trains.

Although the project was never finished,[2] people and goods continued to flow to and from the capital at St. Augustine, along the main corridor known as the Camino Real."

The area at the time was a wilderness uninhabited by Europeans, while the colony of New Smyrna begun and named by the Scottish Dr. Andrew Turnbull was not founded until 1768.

[6] The British built the King's Road from Colerain, Georgia to New Smyrna,[7] and the Spanish did use it when they reacquired Florida in 1783, but afterward they were rather lax in maintaining it.