Here's something you might be interested in.
Ask a Hipster — Advice you didn't know you needed
Big Screen — Movie commentary
Blurt — Music's inside track
Booze News — San Diego spirits
Classical Music — Immortal beauty
Classifieds — Free and easy
Cover Stories — Front-page features
Drinks All Around — Bartenders' drink recipes
Excerpts — Literary and spiritual excerpts
Feast! — Food & drink reviews
Feature Stories — Local news & stories
Fishing Report — What’s getting hooked from ship and shore
From the Archives — Spotlight on the past
Golden Dreams — Talk of the town
The Gonzo Report — Making the musical scene, or at least reporting from it
Letters — Our inbox
Movies@Home — Local movie buffs share favorites
Movie Reviews — Our critics' picks and pans
Musician Interviews — Up close with local artists
Neighborhood News from Stringers — Hyperlocal news
News Ticker — News & politics
Obermeyer — San Diego politics illustrated
Outdoors — Weekly changes in flora and fauna
Overheard in San Diego — Eavesdropping illustrated
Poetry — The old and the new
Reader Travel — Travel section built by travelers
Reading — The hunt for intellectuals
Roam-O-Rama — SoCal's best hiking/biking trails
San Diego Beer — Inside San Diego suds
SD on the QT — Almost factual news
Sheep and Goats — Places of worship
Special Issues — The best of
Street Style — San Diego streets have style
Surf Diego — Real stories from those braving the waves
Theater — On stage in San Diego this week
Tin Fork — Silver spoon alternative
Under the Radar — Matt Potter's undercover work
Unforgettable — Long-ago San Diego
Unreal Estate — San Diego's priciest pads
Your Week — Daily event picks
Where does the Spanish Trail end in San Diego?
Matmail:
I was in St. Augustine, Florida, and saw a cement sphere designated as the start of the Old Spanish Trail. It also said that the trail ended in San Diego. Do you know where it ends in San Diego and if there is any plaque there?
-- Don, the net
Before the mid-1700s, the southern U.S. was lousy with old Spaniards on trails. It's hard to find a city between St. Augustine and Sonoma that doesn't have a street named Camino Real or a footpath called the Old Spanish Trail. For the most part, these were the roads connecting Spanish missions. Before that, many had been Indian trails. Spain never had much luck in Florida while they owned it, but they did manage to establish a town at St. Augustine in 1521 and build a passel of missions across the panhandle to Pensacola. By the early 1700s, the trail extended into southern Alabama and Mississippi and up through New Orleans to Natchitoches, Louisiana. At that point, you could pick up a trail that turned southwest to San Antonio and became a tangle of routes that would take you as far as Mexico City; Santa Fe, New Mexico; San Francisco; or San Diego, via Los Angeles. When the friars left and the Fords took over, many of these routes would become a town's main street or a highway.
So now it's 1929, and people are crazy about cars. A few motorheads in St. Augustine got the idea that they wanted to drive a cross-country auto route to San Diego that would follow old Spanish mission routes. This was long before any interstate highways existed. They named themselves the Old Spanish Trail Association and hit the road.
Once out of Florida, the route went through Mobile (AL), Biloxi (MS), New Orleans, Thibodaux (LA), Lafayette (LA), Beaumont (TX), Houston, San Antonio, Sonora (TX), El Paso, Las Cruces (NM), Douglas (AZ), Tucson, Yuma, and San Diego. When the group returned to St. Augustine, they put up the globe monument that you saw, made of coquina (shell-and-coral limestone), with the plaque marking mile zero of their camino real. The end point would have been the Mission San Diego de Alcalá, but there's no marker. Apparently they didn't feel like making the bumpy drive all the way back to put one up.
Matthew Alice Exposed as Fraud!
Pinhead! Idiot! Oaf! Just some of the epithets flying around Alice Acres this week. Once again the truth police show up and take me into custody. I plead nolo cerebrum, so all I got was community service: Go downtown and polish the plaque marking the San Diego end of the Old Spanish Trail, which happens to be in Horton Plaza, in front of Planet Hollywood. (The other end is in St. Augustine, Florida, if you missed the original question.) Among the plainclothes squad sent out to cuff me: Dan Czarnecki; Michael Hone, Explorer at Large; nameless, the phantom of the San Diego Opera; and Kim from Golden Hill, who suggests that the elves might be developing a drinking problem. If so, they're obviously not doing it at Planet Hollywood.
Here's something you might be interested in.
Where does the Spanish Trail end in San Diego?
Where does the Spanish Trail end in San Diego?
Matmail:
I was in St. Augustine, Florida, and saw a cement sphere designated as the start of the Old Spanish Trail. It also said that the trail ended in San Diego. Do you know where it ends in San Diego and if there is any plaque there?
-- Don, the net
Before the mid-1700s, the southern U.S. was lousy with old Spaniards on trails. It's hard to find a city between St. Augustine and Sonoma that doesn't have a street named Camino Real or a footpath called the Old Spanish Trail. For the most part, these were the roads connecting Spanish missions. Before that, many had been Indian trails. Spain never had much luck in Florida while they owned it, but they did manage to establish a town at St. Augustine in 1521 and build a passel of missions across the panhandle to Pensacola. By the early 1700s, the trail extended into southern Alabama and Mississippi and up through New Orleans to Natchitoches, Louisiana. At that point, you could pick up a trail that turned southwest to San Antonio and became a tangle of routes that would take you as far as Mexico City; Santa Fe, New Mexico; San Francisco; or San Diego, via Los Angeles. When the friars left and the Fords took over, many of these routes would become a town's main street or a highway.
So now it's 1929, and people are crazy about cars. A few motorheads in St. Augustine got the idea that they wanted to drive a cross-country auto route to San Diego that would follow old Spanish mission routes. This was long before any interstate highways existed. They named themselves the Old Spanish Trail Association and hit the road.
Once out of Florida, the route went through Mobile (AL), Biloxi (MS), New Orleans, Thibodaux (LA), Lafayette (LA), Beaumont (TX), Houston, San Antonio, Sonora (TX), El Paso, Las Cruces (NM), Douglas (AZ), Tucson, Yuma, and San Diego. When the group returned to St. Augustine, they put up the globe monument that you saw, made of coquina (shell-and-coral limestone), with the plaque marking mile zero of their camino real. The end point would have been the Mission San Diego de Alcalá, but there's no marker. Apparently they didn't feel like making the bumpy drive all the way back to put one up.
Matthew Alice Exposed as Fraud!
Pinhead! Idiot! Oaf! Just some of the epithets flying around Alice Acres this week. Once again the truth police show up and take me into custody. I plead nolo cerebrum, so all I got was community service: Go downtown and polish the plaque marking the San Diego end of the Old Spanish Trail, which happens to be in Horton Plaza, in front of Planet Hollywood. (The other end is in St. Augustine, Florida, if you missed the original question.) Among the plainclothes squad sent out to cuff me: Dan Czarnecki; Michael Hone, Explorer at Large; nameless, the phantom of the San Diego Opera; and Kim from Golden Hill, who suggests that the elves might be developing a drinking problem. If so, they're obviously not doing it at Planet Hollywood.
Comments