Walking El Camino Real and the Ranchería Grande

Your walk will take you along a short segment of El Camino Real de los Tejas National Historic Trail. On this walk you will pass or walk on actual remnants, called swales, of the foot paths made over hundreds of years by Native Americans, later used by Spanish explorers, soldiers, and missionaries, and then by American colonists from the north and east. 

Since the earliest Spanish journeys into Texas, explorers encountered the twenty-three Native American clan groups that lived intermittently in the Ranchería Grande. The Ranchería Grande was a large cultural and commercial center within the vast Tejas Alliance where tribal groups came from all directions to conduct ceremonies, inter-marry, and trade. 

You will be walking through part of the Ranchería Grande area to the Baumann Village Site which has been archaeologically researched and certified as being the site of one of the Ranchería Grande villages.