E R N CRUSADERS
The convention to organize at Mobile, Alabama, December 10-11, 1915. It is recorded that lpfl delegates were ft-om Florida; 274 ft-om Alabana;, sne from Mississippi; five from Louisiana (New Orleans); one from Arizona. A promotion map published prior to the convention shows that South Georgia was proposed for the route eastward; that route offered easy waterway crossings compared with the old King's Highway (Camino Real in Spanish) through North Florida.be-tweeh'Saint Augustine and Pensacola. Floridians attended the convention in force to assure the adoption of the historic route regardless of physical difficulties and costs presented by those rivers and bays of the coastal country. They stopped at ''arianna, Florida, and held a convention of their own and resolved to crusade for the ancient camino real. At the ''obile convention they strenously plead their cause and the Old Spanish Trail project os officially launched was laid through Florida to Mobile along the trail of the Spanish pioneers. From Mobile to New Orleans it followed the trail of the French and the Spanish. Thu3, at the beginning historical integrity became the policy rather than mere expediency.
"hey were crusaders then, dreaming dreams as did the crusaders of old. No connected road existedVleng that Gulf of Mexico country. The river3 and bays and their basins from New Orleans eastward would require, as present construction shows, over thirty miles of bridges and..eiei«e*e with costs running into, tens of millions of dollars. The present era of highly organized highway departments and of State road laws had not yet arrived. Because of these big waterways the cities and country were units on semi-islands with but little acquaintance with one another; their communications were along t’no3e waterways, not across them.
It was a dream of unlicensed enthusiasms to then hope for a modern highway through that country. The Spanish conqulstadores and padres could travel about in their primitive way but seven years were to pass before the governments admitted the practicability of an automobile highway. Then southern capacity for achievement rose to majestic heights and millions of dollars were made available and superhighways and -bridges were built. During those years crusading forces grew in strength.' It is the crusader that supplies the impulses that force progress.
1 was not easily transformed into a modern road. Mobile ■ promote interest for an automobile road through the f. between New Orleans and the Florida East Coa3t. "/eat
land of darkness to those people at that time. It seems ■uld be constructed easily was the first thought rather than rail of the Spanish fathers through North Florida. This the Gulf of Mexico and offered difficult construction all those organizing years crusaders rose who battled integrity a modem highway could attain and those crusaders
Organization Meeting at '.obile . _______,	—	iK,.
continued until the modern Old Spanish Trail was. officially laid from Florida to California through the lands of the Spanish explorers, conquerors, colonizers, viceroys, governors, padres and others, and until paved roads and great bridges, costing more than 3100,000,000, assured the pleasures of these Spanish Borderlands to American travel.