THE TEXAS MONTHLY
562
though it was difficult to “sell” the idea to many counties and towns, a position upon this highway, as upon other national highways, is a permanent advantage to the communities through which it passes, but it seems to those, whose fingers are upon the pulse of the fast-growing Southwest, that it is an especial advantage to be measured only in terms of agricultural productivity, climatic desirability and industrial expansion. It harks back to the words of the “Father of Texas”, Stephen F. Austin, who said, “We do not say that Texas is a visionary land of perfection, nor that the elements of perfection have met in her so as to enable her to fulfill every vain desire of man. A land such as this has not been bestowed upon earth. While we claim nothing unreal, no poetic exaggerations or fictitious excellence for this region, we could confidently assert that no State on the continent is so eminently favored by nature in fertility of the soil or healthfulness of climate”.
All south-bound highways feed into the Old Spanish Trail, which must necessarily increase its significance as an empire-builder. Even thus early in a season given over to motor travel, the traffic in vacationists is heavy, augmented by the resort and tourist-camp development of the past five years. And this indomitable traveling public is becoming aware that a mere drive along the highway itself tells only a part of the story, that trips through the adjoining territory reveal splendidly preserved remains of pre-historic civilization, ruins of French and Spanish occupation and thousands of spots of artistic and historic interest. It follows from east to west the footsteps of the explorer and settler from the first invasion of the Spaniards in 1565, to the fine ruins of the missionary period dating two hundred years later. It is dotted with sites of historic conflicts between Indians and whites along the roaring stage-coach trail. It is replete with spots of scenic grandeur, now open to the less intrepid adventurer for whom the heat and desolation of the desert holds only fascination and wistful memories of days when men were two-gun warriors and Roy Bean was “the law west of the Pecos”.
The completion of the Old Spanish Trail was celebrated in Saint Augustine with a convention of noted personages and three days of colorful pageantry in which the landing of the Spanish adventurers was reenacted and the subsequent westward