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ELCA Martineztown Highroad of El Camino Wayside AD
Transcript
You are standing on the sidewalk along the east side of Edith Blvd, and Marquette Avenue is behind you. In front of you is a slanted wayside panel, about four feet wide, three feet tall and about four feet off the ground on a flagstone retaining wall below the gravel slope. There is a red park bench a few feet south of the panel.
Wayside title, High Road of El Camino Real. Red banner at the top of the wayside panel has the triangular logo of El Camino Real de Tierra Adentro National Historic Trail. Along with credits for the City of Albuquerque, Bureau of Land Management and National Park Service.
The wayside has a map of El Camino through the Rio Grande Valley, historic photos and text in both English and Spanish.
Main text: For centuries, the 1,600 mile El Camino Real de Tierra Adentro was the only road connecting Albuquerque to the outside world. It would become one of the villa’s leading economic assets as large convoys used it as a rendezvous point for trade up and down the Rio Grande Valley.
Soldiers, merchants, and explorers walked along a segment known as the “high road” which paralleled the Rio Grande Valley and is known today as Edith Blvd. They brought goods and customs that forever changed the land and culture of the area. During the Mexican and Early Territorial periods, travelers stopped to rest in the small settlement cluster and working village where Martineztown stands today.
At the center of the panel is a hand drawn map of the Rio Grande Valley pointing out major stops along El Camino, Names of the Pueblos, and the Sandia Mountain range. A black line runs top to bottom through the center of the map representing the Rio Grande. A Red line representing El Camino, follow the Rio Grande, crossing the river at a few points near Albuquerque.
Text below map reads, Spanish settlements in the Middle Rio Grande Valley, connected by El Camino and the Rio Grande. 1779 ( this from a map by Bernardo de Miera y Pacheco),
Text in the top right of panel is a quote from Zebulan Pike’s journal dated March 7, 1807. Marched at nine o’clock through a country better cultivated and inhabited than any I had yet seen. Arrived at Albuquerque, a village on the east side of Rio del Norte. […] Both above and below Albuquerque, the citizens were beginning to open canals, to let in the water of the river to fertilize the plains and fields which border its banks on both sides; where we saw men, women, and children, of all ages and sexes, at joyful labor which was to crown with rich abundance their future harvest and insure them plenty for the ensuing year. Those scenes brought to my recollection the bright descriptions given by Savary of opening of the canals in Egypt. The cultivation of the fields was commenced, and everything appeared to give life and gayety to the surrounding scenery. From the Journal of Zebulon Montgomery Pike, with Letters and Related Documents. 1st Edition by Donald Jackson. From the University of Oklahoma Press, Norman Oklahoma in 1966.
Photo below quoted text box is a black and white photo of a yoke of oxen pulling a wooden cart.
Text below ox photo reads, f or 300 years, oxen as well as mules pulled carros and carretas (like the one pictured above) on El Camino Real. These were the first wheeled vehicles used in North America. Vehicles move much faster along the stretch known today as Edith Boulevard.
Black and white photograph of two wagons laden with canvas bags full of wool. The stacks are taller than the men and mules standing round the wagons.
Text below this photo reads. Pictured above: two wagons loaded with wool to be sold to H.M. Hosick and Company at 400 West Railroad Ave (now Central Avenue) about 1890. Weaving was an important commercial and domestic activity in New Mexico throughout the Spanish Colonial Period and well into the Territorial era. Prior to the arrival of the Spanish along El Camino Real in 1598, neither wool nor the treadle loom was known in this region. End of wayside description.
Description
AD of the Wayside exhibit "Highroad of El Camino Real" in Martineztown in Albuquerque.
Credit
NPS
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