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534 ILLUSTRATED WORLD
Marking EI Camino Real
Marking the path of the padres
between the Mission San Diego
and Mission Sonoma, seven hundred
miles north, are seven hundred
of the oddest road signs in the
United States. They are in the
form of mission bells, such as hang
in the belfries of those of the California
missions which have withstood
the wear and tear of time.
The upright bearing the bell carries
also a plate giving the name by
which this path was known nearly
a century and a half ago, ElCamino
Real—The King's Highway—and
also the distance to the nearest
mission in each direction.
And a right royal road this is today
since it has been made a part
of one of two state highways running
the length of California, one
through the coast counties and one
through the middle of the state.
Most of it has already been paved
and all of it will one day be, and
even now El Camino Real is a
Mecca for motorists who find a
sentimental interest in the chain of
missions, in ruins or restored, that
show where the ruthless hand of
civilization was first laid upon the
ahorieinal American son the Pacific
Coast. The road as traveled by the
Franciscan fathers connected their
twenty-one missions, three pueblos
and four presidios, the latter being
the military establishments which
were the secular contribution of
ambitious Spanish colonizers toward
the conquest of the Indian inhabitants.
The photographs shown
here were taken on the day that the
connecting links of this modernized
highway were completed and the
bells raised to mark the event of
opening the road.