El Camino Real: Alto to Crockett

Highway 21 follows the line of El Camino Real de los Tejas, the Spanish road of the 1690s that ran from Louisiana across Texas to Mexico, now a National Historic Trail. This stretch runs south-west from Alto through some of its oldest ground. A few miles out of Alto it passes Caddo Mounds State Historic Site, where ancestral Caddo people built a village and ceremonial center more than 1,200 years ago; three earthen mounds remain.

South-west of Alto the road opens onto the Neches River valley and crosses the river, then reaches Weches and Mission Tejas State Park, with its 1930s Civilian Conservation Corps replica of a Spanish mission, the early-1800s Rice Family Log Home and a remnant of the old road on its trails. From there Highway 21 runs through the pine woods of the Davy Crockett National Forest into Crockett, the Houston County seat, named for David Crockett, who is said to have camped near the townsite in January 1836 on his way to San Antonio. The curves are gentle; the history is the point.