San Antonio Express-News (Sunday)
Centennial celebration planned for trail marker
There is a big rock at the northeast corner of San Antonio’s City Hall grounds, and it has been there for almost a century.
Known as the
Zero Mile Marker or Milestone, this hefty boulder of Texas granite explains itself a bit cryptically with an affixed bronze tablet, engraved “Zero Milestone/Old Spanish
Trail,” followed by an east-west list of American cities (St. Augustine, Fla.; Pensacola, Fla.; Mobile, Ala.; New Orleans; Houston; San Antonio; El Paso; Tucson, Ariz.; and Yuma, Ariz.).
The text also recognizes that the marker was “Dedicated by Gov. Pat M. Neff, March 27, 1924” and “Erected by the San Antonio Federation of Women’s Clubs/Mrs. J.K. Beretta, President.”
Key to it all is the Old Spanish Trail — “(a) historic named highway known as the Old Spanish Trail (that) includes segments of some of the oldest roads and trails in Texas,” according to its entry in the “Historical Highways” section of the Texas Historical Commission website, thc.texas.gov. “Spanning the nation from St. Augustine, Fla., to San Diego, Calif., the OST … was touted as the shortest transcontinental highway in the United
States,” especially compared with the Abraham Lincoln Highway, which traversed the Midwest.
Starting in the 1910s, interest groups all over the country planned long-distance routes incorporating existing roads for commemorative highways honoring individuals, organizations or historical events. At least two others — the Jefferson Davis Highway, a project of the United Daughters of the Confederacy, and the American Legion Highway — came through San Antonio. There’s a marker, placed in 1936, at the Bexar
County Courthouse (mentioned here Dec. 31, 2023) that represents their juncture.
Road sponsors raised funds for improvements and markers or to produce brochures with maps and sightseeing suggestions for cities along the way.
The Old Spanish Trail Association, founded in 1915 by supporters from Florida and Alabama, published a 1923 guidebook, “The Old Spanish Trail,” that promoted
San Antonio as a city of “perpetual springtime,” praising its “warm, kindly sunlight, the hospitality of (its) gay social life and many outdoor pleasures,” while pointing the reader toward the Alamo, the other Spanish colonial missions,
San Fernando Cathedral and Fort Sam Houston.
As many as 250 named routes had been plotted at their mid-1920s peak, says the “Highway History” page on the Federal
Highway Administration website, www.fhwa.dot.gov. There was considerable overlap and no standard signage, which could be confusing to motorists, and the cobbled-together named “highways” weren’t recognized as such by the U.S. Bureau of Public Roads nor state governments. Local boosters, however, saw the theme roads’ value in attracting visitors.
A marker for the western terminus of the Old Spanish Trail was dedicated Nov. 17, 1923, in
San Diego as the Pacific Milestone. Plans were soon underway for a marker in San Antonio and one in St. Augustine (completed and celebrated April 2-4, 1929).
San Diego got a marble column and St. Augustine a sphere made of shells, while San Antonio organizers chose a “notable stone,” according to the San Antonio Express, Feb. 3, 1924.
This was a 5-ton “natural boulder, calculated to be over a million years old, standing about 5 feet high, selected from Central Texas granite,” says the Express, Feb. 29, 1924.
It was to be seated on City Hall grounds, for the site’s proximity to San Fernando Cathedral, traditionally considered the geographical center of San Antonio and the point from which all mileage to and from the city was measured.
Known as the Zero Milestone, the Old Spanish Trail marker also would be “the natural zero point for mileage to Austin … to Corpus Christi, Del Rio and other places,” says the Express, Feb. 3, 1924. Also “an intersecting point of the ancient Camino Real (connecting Mexico City to New Spain) … The monument will take rank as a spot of great significance.”
Approved by City
Council and backed by the Chamber of Commerce, the unveiling of the big rock was planned to coincide with the district convention of the Texas Federation of Women’s Clubs and the fifth annual reunion of the Pioneer Freighters. Many members of both groups were expected to attend the dedication.
The March 27, 1924, ceremony started with former freighters (teamsters of the Old West), scouts and Indian fighters — on parade with 14-mule wagon trains, oxcarts and stagecoaches and “older scouts on gentle saddle horses,” according to the Express, March 23, 1924. When they arrived at the dedication on Military Plaza, they halted before a podium for city, state and club dignitaries and a seating area filled with members of the Federation of Women’s Clubs and the Old Spanish
Trail Association.
A program provided by OST 100, an organization that preserves and shares the history of the themed roadway, shows that the 2:30 p.m. event began with an invocation by the Rt. Rev. James S. Johnston, bishop of the Episcopal Diocese of West Texas. Sallie Ward Beretta presented the marker to the city and Bexar County on behalf of the City Federation of Women’s Clubs.
Local Girl Scouts did the unveiling. H.B.
Ayres, managing director of the Old Spanish Trail Association, accepted the monument, while Mayor John W. Tobin accepted for the city.
Texas Gov. Pat Neff gave the dedicatory address, describing the huge stone’s location as “within the shadow of the age-old San Fernando Cathedral, whose uplifted iron cross has always been used as the beginning point for land surveys and … represents the geographical center of the Alamo
City.”
The Most Rev. Arthur J. Drossaerts, archbishop of the Catholic Archdiocese of San Antonio, delivered the benediction. Many of the audience, who included Texas highway commissioners and other state and county officials, went on to attend a South Texas Road Conference that evening in the Gunter Hotel.
The big boulder’s centennial will be marked at 2 p.m. March 23 with a reenactment of the Zero Milestone dedication at City Hall, with current and past officials and clergy taking the parts of their predecessors.
“The reenactment will be as accurate as possible,” said Charlotte Kahl, OST 100 founder, with dignitaries arriving in Model T Fords, (with) horses and wagons following as a stagecoach delivers letters of greeting from California to Texas.” For details, visit www.oldspanishtrailcentennial.com.