The first person to pioneer the Camino Real was Don Juan de Oñate, the son of a wealthy silver baron in the mining city of Zacatecas. He had participated in military campaigns against the Chichimec Indians and had learned the ropes of administration in the management of silver mines. In short, he qualified as an able soldier and frontier aristocrat.

Oñate received the title of governor and a contract to settle New Mexico during September of 1595; however, numerous problems delayed his expedition until early in 1598. To a blare of trumpets and the flutter of silken banners, he finally got under way, leading 129 soldiers, their families and servants, a huge cart train that stretched almost two miles, and a vast herd of livestock (nearly 7,000 head of horses, mules, oxen, cattle, sheep, goats and pigs). Several Franciscan friars and Indian allies also accompanied the caravan.

This impressive cavalcade struck a northward course from Santa Bárbara that took it across the Chihuahua desert toward a rendezvous with the Rio Grande at El Paso. Since previous explorers had followed routes that lay far to the east or west, Oñate was, in effect, blazing a new trail. Indeed, he was adding one more leg, the final appendage to the historic Camino Real.

To locate the best route, Oñate sent his young nephew Vicente de Zaldívar ahead with a scouting party. After getting lost, experiencing difficulties with Indians, and suffering from hunger and thirst, the Spanish eventually found the river and then promptly returned to the expedition with the news. Oñate guided his caravan through a vast field of sand dunes named Los Médanos, which even today awe travelers who drive south from Ciudad Juarez, and he reached El Paso Valley in April during good weather.

Here Oñate conducted a formal ceremony, taking possession of the land in the name of His Majesty, for he considered this place as the beginning of his New Mexico jurisdiction. After an open-air religious service and a feast of fish from the river, the Spaniards concluded with a dramatic play written for the occasion by Captain Marcos Farfán de los Godos.

The Spanish and their native guides, servants, and families now began the ascent of the valley of the Rio Grande, or the Rio del Norte as they were in the habit of calling it. The cart tracks continued to mark the route of the Camino Real, the new road all succeeding travelers would follow. Oñate selected and named each campsite, or paraje, and these camps later appeared on Spanish maps.

As they moved up the Mesilla Valley (below the future site of Las Cruces), the caravan experienced a series of small tragedies. A baby died and was buried on the side of the trail, two horses got into the river and drowned, and some valuable oxen strayed and were lost. Then on May 21, near the upper end of the valley, one of Oñate's offiers died: sixty-year-old gray-headed Pedro Robledo. The official log gives no reason for his death, but we have to suppose that the rigors of the journey must have been a contributing factor. He left four stalwart sons who went on to participate in the founding of New Mexico.

Appropriately, Governor Oñate named the campsite containing the new grave the Paraje de Robledo, and it was known by this name until the end of the colonial era. Just beyond that place the Rio Grande makes its long flat bend to the west, cutting through rough country as it skirts two mountain ranges. Oñate elected to leave the river with an advance scouting unit and bear due north to designate a path for the cumbersome cart train. He rode up a level and waterless plain that unfolded like a dove-colored ribbon for 90 miles between parallel chains of sierras (referred to as the Jornado de Muerto or Journey of Death).

The ten or more parajes that Oñate designated on this portion of the Camino Real were deficient in all three of the common necessities required of a good camp-water, firewood, and grass for grazing. Oñate, as well as every overlander who came after him, made a careful point of getting through the dreaded desert as swiftly as possible. At its north end, the governor rejoined the Rio Grande at a point named the Paraje de Fray Cristóbal de Salazar, who was a missionary with the expedition.

Continuing upriver, Oñate and his followers entered the first villages of the Pueblo Indians, some of whom fled at his approach while others demonstrated restrained friendliness. At the adobe community of Teypana the headman provided the hungry newcomers with abundance of corn, whereupon Oñate christened the place Socorro (Succor or Assistance) in gratitude for the aid he had received.

At Santo Domingo Pueblo, situated 35 miles north of modern Albuquerque, the governor held a council on July 7 with Indians from the surrounding country. In a ceremony they must have poorly understood, the native leaders swore allegiance to the Spanish Crown and the Church. From there, Oñate's party commenced the last leg of the trip. Across an open plain, just past Santo Domingo, rose a 900-foot volcanic escarpment that became known afterward as La Bajada. Although a narrow switchback trail was passable by horse, it was no route for a cart caravan. Therefore, Oñate issued orders that would send the main expedition, still following at some distance, on a detour to the east.

By July 11, Governor Oñate and his companions had reached the Tewa pueblo of Caypa, or San Juan as they renamed it. Here he determined to establish his military headquarters and the capital of his grandly proclaimed Kingdom of New Mexico. According to tradition he selected this location in the Española Valley because it was well-placed in the center of his realm and because the Indians, since Coronado's day a half century before, had shown unusual hospitality toward Spaniards. On August 18 the body of colonists with their carts and livestock finally arrived at San Juan, thus completing an epic march that had lasted more than six months.

A short time later, Oñate moved his settlers to the west bank of the Rio Grande and founded the first formal European municipality west of the Mississippi, the Villa of San Gabriel. For the next decade it remained the official terminus of the far-flung Camino Real. Then, with the establishment of Santa Fe around 1610 as the new capital and main population center, the end of the King's highway shifted to the plaza there.

By that time, Juan de Oñate had resigned as governor of New Mexico and departed for his old home in Zacatecas. But he left behind a well-marked road as a monument to his pioneering achievement. Oñate unquestionably deserves to be remembered as "The Father of the Camino Real."