El Camino Family Restaurant – Socorro, New Mexico
America’s oldest and longest continuously used “highway,” El Camino Real de Tierra Adentro, (Spanish for the Royal Road of the Interior Land) includes a 404 mile stretch that bisects much of the Land of Enchantment from south to north. A large portion of that stretch is barren and desolate, one especially treacherous and dry section even designated by the Spanish conquistadores as the Jornada del Muerto, Spanish for “route of the dead man.” For nearly 400 years–from 1598 (more than two decades before the Mayflower’s storied landing) to 1882–El Camino Real served as both a trade route and as the route taken by settlers and conquerors alike. For four centuries, thousands of intrepid Spanish and Mexican colonists, conquering warriors and…