SHARING THE PAST
With Kendall County’s growth, traffic has surged on our existing roadways, making vehicle backlogs a routine public topic. Many wish for earlier times.
Today, with streets and highways as a backdrop, we’ll explore “earlier times,” introducing you to two ancient pathways that coursed through Kendall County and the Boerne region.
How early? As one corridor was documented in 1767, let’s just say that the city of Boerne, Kendall County and TxDOT did not exist when the Camino Real de San Saba and Pinta Trail were first utilized in our region. Over the years, the Kendall County Historical Commission has dedicated three Texas Historical Commission (THC) markers, honoring our two distinct Native American pathways; each marker is unique to its adjacent terrain and land heritage.
Their original names of Camino Real de San Saba and Camino Pinta reflect the fact they were formally utilized in Texas’ Spanish era. They ranged from San Antonio de Bexar northwest through our lands into today’s Hill Country.
Surveyor and future Kendall County resident John James, who later teamed with Gustav Theisen and plotted Boerne in 1852, traveled out of San Antonio in early 1840 for the Bexar Land District to conduct land surveys.
Since both trails were evident to James, he identified and recorded significant portions of both trails within our county’s southern boundary; they served as useful landmarks for future surveys.
At the time of James’ excursion, the vast Texas landscape west and north of San Antonio was unoccupied. The Camino Real de San Saba coursed northwest through a corner of the future 1852 Boerne plot from San Antonio’s San Pedro Springs to the San Saba River in today’s Menard County.
It was shadowed approximately three miles to the east by the Camino Pinta or Pinta Trail, crossing through George Wilkins Kendall’s Post Oak Spring Ranch as it ranged northwest into the hills.
On his maps, James anglicized both routes: the Camino de San Saba was recorded as the San Saba Road and the numerous spellings of the Pinta Trail (Camino Pintas, Camino Pindas) became Paint Road.
The highways of their era, these rudimentary trails were still present and utilized in the earliest days of immigration into the Hill Country, as German Adelsverein associate, Alwin Sörgel’s 1847 musings are universally applicable to our pathways. “Observation shows how cleverly the Indians took advantage of the quirks of nature and the opportunities present, to establish this trail.”
Utilizing these “quirks of nature” allowed those pilgrimaging on the primitive conduits to skirt hills, penetrate forests, navigate and channel through valleys, avoid the steepest grades and cliffside drops, and funnel to more advantageous water crossings.
Both the San Saba and Pinta pathways were repurposed to support the Fredericksburg colony, accelerating their use and development. The success of finding direct passages with minimal obstructions played an important role in the development of Texas, the Hill Country, Kendall County and Boerne.
If you would like to read the narratives on our county’s three THC trail markers, or drive to see them, utilize this link for their photos and locations: bit.ly/KCTRAILS .
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