- ANNOUNCER: The Texas Parks and Wildlife Television Series is supported in part by Texas Parks and Wildlife Foundation -- conserving the wild things and wild places of Texas, thanks to members across the state.

Additional funding is provided by Toyota.

Your local Toyota dealers are proud to support outdoor recreation and conservation in Texas.

Toyota -- Let's Go Places.

- NARRATOR: Coming up on Texas Parks & Wildlife... - There are all kinds of remnants on the landscape that tie back to the Camino Real.

It’s the road that led to the founding of Texas-- we would not be calling Texas Texas without it today.

- There are myths that these are bird and bat blenders, and so I think then that there is a lot of pressure on this technology of how green are you really?

[theme music] ♪ ♪ - NARRATOR: Texas Parks and Wildlife, a television series for all outdoors.

- STEVEN GONZALES: The Camino can definitely allow someone to travel back in time.

On the Rio Grande, there are these worlds, these places coming together, and that is what the Camino has always done.

The cultural imprints that the Spanish left in the 1700s are still seen in many of these towns along the Camino.

The Camino Real has always been about interaction between different cultures.

[upbeat music] That trade and travel still takes place at these crossings.

There are still connections there that have lasted for hundreds of years over time.

[thunder] I'm Steven Gonzales.

I'm executive director of El Camino Real de los Tejas National Historic Trail Association.

El Camino Real de los Tejas is the old royal road that came up from Mexico City to establish Texas in Spanish colonial times.

It's the road that led to the founding of Texas.

[dramatic music] There are many caminos reales that make up the Camino Real.

In times past these roads have different names because of the places that they were going to.

The Old San Antonio Road and the Nacogdoches Road, La Bahia Road and the Laredo Road.

Every Texan of note that we can think of, all the way from Spaniards such as Alonzo de Leon to Davy Crockett, Jim Bowie, Sam Houston, they all traveled along portions of the Camino Real at one time or another, and it's really elemental to the state's history.

We think about things like the battle of the Alamo and Goliad, and we forget that those troops were actually traveling along roadways, pathways, and those were largely the Camino Real and segments of it.

[traffic passing] So one of our goals is to make the public more aware of it.

Essentially, Spain was establishing this new kingdom in what is now the U.S.A.

They saw the French as a threat.

[military march music] In 1714, the French established Fort Saint Jean Baptiste in Natchitoches, Louisiana.

That is the oldest settlement in Louisiana, and the easternmost part of the Camino Real.

That French settlement alarmed the Spanish, so the Spanish in turn established the first capital of Texas at Los Adaes, in what is now Robeline, Louisiana.

No one could imagine that the first capital of Texas is in present-day Louisiana.

It was essentially these two European powers standing off in what they considered to be the wilderness.

But once that French threat subsided, there was no longer a need for those missions and presidios to be out there.

And so those fortifications and settlements, they fell back and back and back.

There is something about the South Texas landscape that I think more easily evokes the Camino, and travel by Spaniards in times past.

[Tejano music] - Buenos dias.

- San Ygnacio is a very unique community along the Camino Real.

It's essentially an old Mexican village that was built in the mid-1830s, which is being preserved and taken care of by people like the River Pierce Foundation and others there in the community.

- It is the last of its kind in this country.

- STEVEN: It's one of the best places anywhere along the trail to kind of get that vicarious experience of the Camino and what it may have been like in times past.

Another great place to go and experience the Camino in South Texas is Goliad.

There's no better place to go and see what a Spanish presidio would have looked like.

Goliad has two mission sites.

- Mission Espiritu Santo de Zuniga, dating back to 1749.

And we also have Mission Rosario on the other side of the river, beginning in 1754.

The majority of the restoration work took place in the 1930s, but when you walk inside the chapel, you're getting a really good idea what it would have looked like during the 18th century.

[Gregorian chant music] - The Karankawa didn't get along with the Aranama that were already there, so they created another mission.

- STEVEN: Mission Rosario is not restored.

It has got the remnants of the walls there, so it gives you an idea of the architecture before the restoration would have taken place.

When we think of things like Goliad or the missions in San Antonio, we forget that there was a road that connected those things.

If you look at the layout of San Antonio, with the Camino connecting all the missions, you have the plaza at the core with the Spanish Governor's Palace, the seat of government there, and San Fernando Cathedral right there on the plaza, it really does have the layout, it does fit that formula that the Spanish prescribed way back when, and it's still there on the landscape today.

[traffic passing] Thirty-five really became the superhighway that it is because of the travel along the Camino Real here in Central Texas.

[traffic] [soft music] Following the foot of the escarpment, they would have come to these beautiful springs.

Unlike us flying down a modern highway, they were moving at a much slower pace so they had parajes or campsites every basically 10 to 20 miles.

The towns here in Central Texas essentially pop up along the springs.

There are many archives in the state that have great maps and other historical records related to the Camino Real, one of them being the General Land Office in Austin.

[beep] [door opens] - ALEX CHIBA: This is the 1833 map of Austin's Colony.

- That is impressive.

They have great maps, property deeds and other things that document the Camino, like boundaries of the old Stephen F. Austin Colony.

- The Old San Antonio Road is pretty much the northwestern boundary here.

- STEVEN: Yeah, so it almost looks like where it's crossing the Colorado...

There's the historical record, so we look at the written record from the Spanish... Hard to see what that is.

...From the French, from early Anglo settlers that refers to the trail.

Where we have our archeological project going on is right in here.

Another thing that we can do is discover the trail through archeological efforts.

- SERGIO IRUEGAS: It's like peeling an onion, very slowly.

- STEVEN: Currently we're working on our Rancheria Grande archeological project in Milam County, near the community of Gause.

- SERGIO: These stones were purposely placed here.

- STEVEN: Working with private landowners, we've actually been able to document numerous village sites... - So this would be a defining wall of the structure.

- So we know that in all probability, what we're dealing with is one of the circular style homes.

- STEVEN: The Rancheria Grande was essentially a conglomeration of 22 Native American tribes.

- Mission style points were found up on this area, so right there we know these domestic structures date to the Spanish colonial period.

- STEVEN: Some of the earliest maps do depict the Rancheria Grande and label it there in that general area of what is now Milam County.

It's more extensive back in here, all these petroglyphs within the rock.

It's just a place like no other I've seen in Texas.

It really is this place where there is this huge human history that has occurred over centuries.

[traffic passing] Communities along the Camino are very proud of the trail and its history.

Nacogdoches is one of the oldest communities in Texas.

The first mission in Nacogdoches was established in 1716.

You see on Main Street, it's called El Camino Real just off the plaza.

[acoustic music] We are the first national historic trail organization to actually own a piece of a national historic trail.

And that is the Lobanillo Swales.

- We're here in Sabine County at the Lobanillo Swales.

The East Texas term for that is wagon tracks.

When it was wet, this would get boggy, so what they'd do, they would just move over a few feet and start another one.

- Right now it's in a raw form.

There's no development, there's all kinds of undergrowth.

[pounding] - SURVEYOR: Right there, right there.

- STEVEN: We're working with the National Park Service, Sabine County and others because it does take a combined effort to help develop the trail.

- Thank you, Judge.

- Appreciate it.

- STEVEN: In Sabine County, not far from our property, the Gaines-Oliphint House is on the banks of the Sabine River.

- Gaines ended up here in 1812.

We can pretty well prove that it was built in 1818.

- STEVEN: And is it true it's the oldest Anglo-American structure in Texas?

- WELDON: Log structure, yeah, log structure.

- STEVEN: It's a place that is really deep in Texas history and which essentially every Texan coming from the east would have crossed through at one point or another back in the 1800s.

[water lapping] So we've traveled from the Rio Grande, and now we're here on the Sabine River at the Texas-Louisiana border.

Historically, the trail would have continued on to the first capital of Texas at Los Adaes, which is in present-day Louisiana.

But here we stand on Toledo Bend.

This is the end of the road in modern-day Texas, before heading on to Natchitoches, Louisiana about 60 miles away.

The Camino has always been a place that has bridged borders.

It has brought together people, cultures, and places, and helped to create the state of Texas that we know today.

And that's why it's worthy of its designation as a National Historic Trail.

- KY HARKEY: Our job is to help people fall in love with Texas state parks.

We as our team, the interpretive services branch, every one of us are professional communicators in some way.

We have staff that are writing websites.

We have designers that are creating imagery to support our messages and Kate is no different.

[upbeat music] - When I came into this position, there was no one before me.

They, we had some great support staff.

Some just kind of did the travel part.

Some just did the admin part but then I was the first person to come in to do it all and so I would joke that I am a happy octopus.

I have my arms in all different places but it's getting done.

I just love bringing people together and then also I love a challenge.

- TARA HUMPHREYS: Anybody that can make administrative tasks fun.

She has been the backbone of our interpretive services program and she has not only given us a better atmosphere in our team.

She brings a smile to the workplace every day.

- Being able to train folks as they come in so that they're feeling warm and supported as well as having great collaboration within our division and then also having healthy relationships outside of the division.

That has really been my bread and butter the past five and a half years.

- She lives at this growth edge where she is constantly learning and trying to gain new skills and also at the same time pushing that information and those new skills out to other people so that we can all be learning and growing with her.

I'm sure people have talked about her videos that she's made and they are very fun.

[record scratch] - She's using very engaging methods both in person, uh virtual video, even developing mobile-based resources so that as our teams are traveling the whole state at all hours of the day they can pull out their phone and get Kate's knowledge and information at their fingertips.

- I just I find joy in creating resources.

My favorite motto is I just don't want to recreate the wheel.

- That is a remarkable powerful person that can sit at the hub of a spoked wheel as the happy octopus, on the growth edge, pushing out information and pulling in information at the same time.

- TARA: We all want to be like Kate.

She's fantastic and couldn't be prouder to work with such a wonderful person.

- KY: Her ideas, her contributions, her perspectives, I've depended on them for our four and a half years of working together and I'm so grateful for her taking the time to, to help support me in my job just like she supports every one of us in each of our prospective work.

[western music] - NARRATOR: Texas is wide open when it comes to wind energy.

With little regulatory oversight, and with ample state and federal support, this new frontier has quickly spread across parts of the state.

From the Panhandle all the way down to the southern coast, Texas now leads the country in wind energy production.

- It doesn't use water, it doesn't have any polluting effects, and it has a big socioeconomic effect.

[wind turbines whoosh] - There's myths that these are bird and bat blenders, and so I think then there's a lot of pressure on this technology of how green are you really, are you perfectly green, a little bit green or medium green.

- NARRATOR: Now there are pressing concerns about the effects wind farms have on the shrinking pristine native habitats and what it will do to the fragile birds that live there.

- We're concerned about this because if the situation is like this now in what we think is good habitat, I'm not sure what's going to happen when we put wind development on top.

[wind from turbine] - NARRATOR: Eighty miles northwest of Dallas sits Next Era Energy's Wolf Ridge site, with 75 wind turbines cranking electricity for the Metroplex.

[wind from turbine] And when it's time for a routine maintenance check... [metal clangs] it's a long climb to the top.

- CHRIS PAGE: Right now, we're 286 feet above the ground.

[metal clangs] With these blades pointed up, from the tip of the blade to the ground is 400 feet.

- NARRATOR: The turbines at Wolf Ridge generate enough electricity to power up to 34,000 homes.

- The wind turbine hub, you want it facing the wind coming at you.

Or you want it facing at a 90 degree from the wind, so that it makes it very economical and gets max production out of em.

- ROLAND BELL: It hadn't been but a year and they already look like they've been here forever.

- NARRATOR: While Dallas Fort Worth gets the electricity, local landowners who lease their property for wind energy get a cash windfall.

- It's just really baffled me I guess to be able to be in the beginning of something like this.

- NARRATOR: Roland Bell has three wind turbines on his Tumbling B Ranch.

- ROLAND: We've been all so concerned with energy, so to me it looks like it's just a start on the right track ya know in four or five years it'll be just like windmills or whatever, you'll be just like part of Texas.

- NARRATOR: And while each Texan is compensated differently, a landowner can make anywhere from five to ten thousand dollars a year per turbine plus an annual royalty payment off of the electricity produced.

- AMANDA: Does it look like it's a fresh kill from last night or this morning?

- STUDENT: Definitely!

- NARRATOR: But there are serious concerns about birds and bats that are killed by wind turbines.

- I'd say since July we definitely are finding more bats than birds.

- NARRATOR: Amanda Hale and students from Texas Christian University are collecting dead birds and bats at Wolf Ridge.

This is an Eastern Red Bat.

- AMANDA: Many bats are actually dying from what's called barotrauma.

[wind from turbine] And behind those swinging blades there's an area of low pressure, when the bats enter into those areas of low pressure, the blood vessels in their lung burst, so their lungs fill with blood and they effectively drown and fall to the ground and die.

- NARRATOR: The goal is to help estimate how many birds and bats are actually being killed by wind turbines here at this sight.

- AMANDA: Boy it looks like a fresh kill doesn't it.

- STUDENT: Yeah.

- AMANDA: It's a small bird, I would say it's a young of the year juvenile Red-Tailed Hawk.

Let's see if we can turn it over and see what sort of damage it has.

There's blood on the bill so it probably hit its head first.

- We hope it's going to help us answer a lot of the questions that we have right now about wind energy.

Are they detrimental to populations?

Is it a minimal impact or is it a large impact?

[footsteps in tall grass] - AMANDA: One of the reasons we're out here looking for carcasses is that we want to be able to predict mortality.

So if we find for example that most of the mortality at this site is occurring at those turbines which are close to forested ridges or that are close to water sources.

Then for future wind farms that information can be incorporated into the planning and turbines can be placed to avoid those sensitive areas.

- NARRATOR: While wind farms like Wolf Ridge utilize existing agriculture land... [bird call] Out in the Panhandle wind development is pushing into untouched native grass prairies.

And that is stressing this threatened bird.

The Lesser Prairie-Chicken.

[Lesser Prairie-chicken calls] - HEATHER: Lesser Prairie-chickens are an icon of the prairie.

[Lesser Prairie-chicken call] They are one of the last most beautiful species to need large acreages, big country of native rangeland to sustain themselves.

- You can hear em booming in the mornings.

- NARRATOR: Biologist Heather Whitlaw works with panhandle ranchers like Lacy Vardeman.

- HEATHER: Lots of open rangeland and open spaces.

- NARRATOR: Here the ranch makes sure there are always tall grasses set aside for nesting.

- LACY: You can start with small steps to keep the prairie chicken in this area, it's a lot of fun to hear them and see them.

- NARRATOR: The concern is these threatened birds won't nest anywhere near tall structures for fear of predators.

- HEATHER: They don't do well with change on the landscape, and we think that we're displacing or moving a nesting female away from where she wants to be and we don't have much habitat left for her to go to.

- To see it just multiply in the way that it has, and really take off.

And I'm afraid they are going to put all of those up and we're going to ruin the habitat in this area and be left with scarred land.

[wind from turbine] - BLAKE GRISHAM: We need to arrange this last trap line.

- NARRATOR: To take a close look at how many prairie chickens rely on native grass prairies, these Texas Tech grad students are setting up some traps.

[Lesser Prairie-chicken calls] - BLAKE: The Lesser Prairie- Chicken was once found in 34 counties in the Texas panhandle, now it's only found in 14 counties.

Scientists believe that conversion of native habitat to agriculture and oil fields as the primary cause.

- NARRATOR: This morning the birds are sluggish wary.

[Lesser Prairie-chicken calls] - NICK PIRIUS: Blake we have a male up on the trap, looks like it's one of the color banded males.

[cage drops] [running footsteps] It's a mad rush, we run out of the car, run to the trap.

Get to the bird as fast as possible without having the bird do too much damage to itself.

[bird flapping] New?

- BLAKE: He's a newbie minimal damage, a little bit cut on his cere, but he's all right.

Our ultimate goal is to provide information to energy producers and to the general public.

[wind turbines] - BLAKE: We are currently in the gold rush state with wind energy in Texas, put em up anywhere you want and I think it's only responsible... Will get a black band over the aluminum band.

...as human beings we assess what's going on before we place them on the landscape.

[bird flies off] - NICK: He's good!

- NARRATOR: And while this new energy industry may well be an improvement from where we've been, the hope is the research from Wolf Ridge and from the panhandle will help.

[Lesser Prairie-Chicken calls] As wind development keeps cranking here in Texas.

- We're trying to get the wind companies to do the right thing, to look at all the environmental impacts that they potentially could have and try and reduce their footprint on the landscape so that they are the green industry that we know they can be.

[dramatic music] [crickets chirp] [crickets chirp] [wind blowing] [wind blowing] [wind blowing] [wind blowing] [wind blowing] [wind blowing] [wind blowing] [wind blowing] This series is supported in part by Texas Parks and Wildlife Foundation -- conserving the wild things and wild places of Texas, thanks to members across the state.

Additional funding is provided by Toyota.

Your local Toyota dealers are proud to support outdoor recreation and conservation in Texas.

Toyota -- Let's Go Places.