Old San Antonio Road

The Old San Antonio Road is considered a part of El Camino Real de los Tejas National Historic Trail.

Louisiana Highway 6 mostly runs alongside the Old San Antonio Road for the entirety of its route through that state from Natchitoches to west of Many.

In 1690, Spanish explorer Alonso de León, following various Indian and buffalo trails, crossed the Rio Grande on his way to East Texas to establish missions, effectively blazing the Old San Antonio Road.

The old route from San Antonio to Louisiana, now called the Camino Arriba, was still a vital link for Texans to the United States.

During the 1860s, the old road had a brief revival as a supply line from the Texas interior to the Confederacy, and for the flow of cotton to Mexico as a means to circumvent the ever-tightening Union blockade.

In 1915, the State of Texas and the Daughters of the American Revolution (DAR) funded a project to place pink granite markers at approximately 5-mile (8.0 km) intervals along the route of the Old San Antonio Road.

Originally, the whole route from the Sabine River to San Marcos carried this designation, but it has since been reduced to a short bypass around Bryan.

[3] On October 18, 2004, President Bush signed a bill designating The El Camino Real de Los Tejas, of which the Old San Antonio Road is part, a National Historic Trail.