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• The Missions

The Missions

For centuries, the path of La Florida’s El Camino Real was mostly lost, covered over by time after the last of Florida’s Spanish missions were abandoned or destroyed in the first decades of the 1700s. Fortunately, the location of two important colonial settlements of Florida’s First Spanish Period (1565-1763) were never forgotten: St. Augustine and Mission San Luis in present-day Tallahassee. Using these two points as anchors on the east and west ends of the original Camino Real, historians and archaeologists have been able to reconstruct its general route.

Historical documents have been extremely valuable for identifying the sequence of missions encountered along the Camino Real and the estimated distances between them. Archaeology has been essential for uncovering their locations, dating them, and providing details of life at the settlements. Thus, while the exact location of the road in relation to every mission site may not always clear, as the map below shows, we can project the Camino Real’s path more precisely than ever before. 

Known Missions

There are no standing remains of any Florida missions and few remnants of the road that connected them. Below is a list of missions known only through colonial era documents and mission archaeology. 

* indicates tentative site identifications