By Eric J. Weilbacher The Herald-Zeitung | 0 comments Since its beginnings, New Braunfels was located on a busy stretch of road that led from one bustling center of trade to another. By 1845, the year the city was founded, San Antonio had been established more than a century earlier in 1718 as a waypoint along the El Camino Real de los Tejas, a system of roads into Texas that in parts followed dirt trails created by Native Americans, according to archaeologist Al McGraw with the Texas Department of Transportation. El Camino Real was built by the Spanish to fight back any encroachment of French settlement from the east and to conduct missionary work among the Native American populations, McGraw said. San Marcos de Neve was also founded along the El Camino Real, by the end of the Spanish colonial period. McGraw wrote in 2002 for the Texas Almanac that the major freshwater springs of the Balcones Escarpment, such as Comal Springs that still bubbles up in Landa Park, guided the expansion of settlements and commerce.

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