In Search of the Royal Road

Underneath the asphalt ribbons of Interstate 5 and U.S. 101 that form the state’s backbone lies an 18th-century dirt path that predestined where Californians would live, work and play for generations to come.

El Camino Real began more than 300 years ago as a link between what would become a trail of 21 missions in California and many more in Baja California. The 2,000-mile route, stretching from the tip of the Baja Peninsula to the Bay Area, passed through modern-day Orange County along the way.

Settlements sprang up along the route and the missions became the foundation of California’s biggest cities, most retaining the names given them by the Franciscan missionaries. Today, the road that connected the remote outposts of Spain and the Catholic Church serves as California’s Main Street, linking major cities and most of its commercial and population centers.

“The most important aspect of El Camino Real in California is not so much its colorful past but that it became the road of development in this state,” said Maureen Everett of the California Federation of Women’s Clubs, which has fought for nearly a century to preserve the road’s history.

“All of our major cities -- San Diego, Los Angeles, Santa Barbara, San Francisco -- grew up along that original road.”

If not for the diligence of the club, California’s oldest byway would have faded into history.

Starting in 1906, the club began marking El Camino Real with symbolic mission bells.

Historians have long debated the exact route -- and even the existence -- of El Camino Real. The corridor shifted several times to accommodate new settlements, relocated missions or nature’s fury.

“A lot of the lore of El Camino Real is rather mythical, sort of by guess and by gosh,” said Orange County historian Jim Sleeper.

“Unquestionably it connected the missions, but the route may have varied.”

In present-day Orange County, as in the late 1700s, El Camino Real runs past Mission San Juan Capistrano. But today the road travels only a few blocks in each direction from the mission before coming to an abrupt halt. Segments can also be found in San Clemente, Tustin and Irvine. About 50 of the bell markers can be spotted in a dozen cities.

The trail through Orange County, at least as it was mapped by the Auto Club of Southern California in 1912, closely follows Interstate 5 from San Diego County, zigzags through Santa Ana, heads north along Anaheim and Harbor boulevards, then makes a sharp left on La Habra Boulevard toward Whittier.

Known as the Royal Road or the King’s Highway, California’s El Camino Real was born in 16th-century Spain when the crown ordered the construction of roads to connect rural villages to the king’s residence.

Conquistadors brought the program to the New World.

In 1769, Gen. Gaspar de Portola, accompanied by Father Junipero Serra, led an expedition to San Francisco to establish a string of missions and presidios. For the next hundred years or so, the route shaped the early West and served as the region’s main artery.

“Everybody passed this road -- the merchants, the entrepreneurs, the cattlemen, the priests, the bandits,” said Max Kurillo, who wrote the definitive history of the road.

“It was the main thoroughfare. It was the only one.”

In Orange County, as throughout the state, the reason for the Royal Road begins and ends with a mission. San Juan Capistrano is home to possibly the most famous of them.

El Camino Real runs behind the mission -- between Interstate 5 and Camino Capistrano, the town’s main thoroughfare.

Unable to decide -- or unable to resist -- the city placed landmark bells on both El Camino Real and Camino Capistrano.

Probably the oldest bell in Orange County -- installed between 1910 and 1915 -- sits on Camino Capistrano in front of El Adobe restaurant, where President Richard Nixon liked to dine on the taco-enchilada-chile relleno combo during his Western White House days.

One of the newest bells, placed in late 2002, is just off Interstate 5 at La Paz Road in Mission Viejo.

Ultimately, El Camino Real connected 21 missions in California -- spaced about 30 miles apart, roughly a day’s ride -- along a 700-mile spine between San Diego and Sonoma. South of the border, the route continued for 1,300 miles to Loreto on the Sea of Cortez, connecting additional Mexican missions.

Today, Interstate 5 south of Los Angeles and the U.S. 101 to the north roughly follow the original path of El Camino Real.

The longest remaining stretch of El Camino Real in Orange County cuts through San Clemente’s commercial core. The road runs the length of town, five miles, from the closed Miramar Theater in the north to the San Diego County line. In between, the road hugs the seaside before switching inland of the freeway, passing taco stands, pizza joints, surf shops and motels promising a “C-Vu.”

Across from San Clemente State Beach, El Camino Market has survived despite the advent of the freeway.

Owner Tony Dynstee cherishes his connection to the old road. “Kings have traveled this highway. I feel proud to be part of the tradition,” said Dynstee, who bought the market in 1965.

Two women are generally credited with preserving El Camino Real. Anna Pitcher of Pasadena initiated the effort in 1892 and kept at her cause without success for a decade. Mrs. A.S.C. Forbes later convinced the California Federation of Women’s Clubs to mount the campaign.

In central Orange County, El Camino Real travels through new and old. The road slices through an outdoor shopping mall on the Tustin-Irvine border, then continues through Tustin, where it runs past the auto center and warehouse store before wending by a master-planned community of cookie-cutter homes.

Tustin went bell crazy in 1970, installing a dozen of the markers along a five-block stretch of the sleepy Old Town district -- none more than 100 yards from the next -- as part of a beautification project.

In 1906, the plan was for each mile of the route through the state to have a bell. The entire length was marked with nearly 400 bells by 1913. But by the 1960s, fewer than 100 bells remained, as vandalism, theft, accidents and road-widening took their toll.

In 1996, the same women’s club that spearheaded the project 90 years earlier resolved to replace the bells. Today, more than 300 are in place.

The 92-pound bells, hanging from 11-foot shepherd’s crook replicas, served as road signs for motorists and often had mileage markers attached to the poles.

The dates on the band, 1769 and 1906, refer to the founding of the first mission and the placement of the first bell.

The oldest bells bear the inscription “Copyrighted 1906 by Mrs. A.S.C. Forbes.”

Along Chapman Avenue in Orange, a chipped, rusted bell with a crooked “El Camino Real” sign attached to the neck of the staff stands in front of a boarded-up ice cream stand.

Farther north in Santa Ana, two Forbes bells on the walkway to the Bowers Museum have been converted to light standards -- something Royal Road purists oppose.

Along Anaheim Boulevard, an original Forbes bell -- installed in 1985 after it was rescued from another location -- stands at the turn-of-the-century Carnegie Library (now a museum), one of the last historic buildings left after the city bulldozed downtown Anaheim in the 1970s to make way for office buildings.

The route through Orange County then heads up Harbor Boulevard through downtown Fullerton and across La Habra -- along what the city dubs “The Boulevard of Bells” -- before ending near the northern terminus of Beach Boulevard, where “Whittier Welcomes You” with a khaki-colored bell at the Los Angeles County border.

Or so the story goes. Lost to history, the exact route of El Camino Real may never be known.

Matthew Roth, historian for the Auto Club, believes the legend of the King’s Highway is a modern myth that can’t be disproved -- put forward as part of an effort to boost the exotic and historic atmosphere of the West in the early 1900s.

“I don’t believe there ever was a specific route called El Camino Real,” Roth said. “I think the idea of a highway connecting all the missions was an invention of the 20th century.”