I scramble gleefully up a concrete incline six feet above the cobblestone road, but Hal Jackson saunters. We stand in the ruins of what was once a large house 20 minutes outside Zacatecas, Mexico. The air is cool. Scrubby mountains pocked with old silver mines sweep across the landscape. Jackson is uneasy. I collect several pebbles, fallen pieces of wall. Jackson shakes his head, wanders the brush. “This is disappointing,” he says, eyes scanning, GPS in one hand, notepad in the other, camera slung round his neck. Why? “It just seems.…” He trails off, gingerly steps over a sharp rock embedded in the earth. He was once a marathoner, and though it’s been 13 years since his last, he maintains a runner’s lean grace. At 70 he looks perhaps 55. “I thought it’d be bigger,” he mutters. “This doesn’t seem right.”

We are in Pánuco, the birthplace of Juan de Oñate, the last of the Spanish conquistadors, whose hand likely had more influence on the American Southwest and northern Mexico than that of any other single explorer. In 1598 Oñate blazed the Camino Real de Tierra Adentro, a trail that became the most used and most significant route of commerce and culture for 300 years. At its peak the Camino Real ran 1,800 miles from Mexico City north to Santa Fe. Spaniards used the trail to settle towns and villages all along the way, Franciscans used it to spread their gospel, troops from the United States and Mexico used it for waging battles and building forts, Indians used it to fight the swelling tide of foreigners, and traders used it for commerce. All morning Jackson and I have searched for the remains of the Oñate family hacienda, and now, with the Jeep Cherokee parked conspicuously on the narrow road, clouds in full bloom beyond the mountains, and my pocket full of pebbles, Jackson’s doubt continues to deepen.

Full Story >>