Digitally Preserving: El Camino Real de California

In 2012 CyArk began work on the El Camino Real project, an initiative to document some of the monuments along the famous route. El Camino Real refers to the 600-mile (965-kilometer) road connecting the 21 Spanish missions in California along with a number of other important structures stretching at its southern end from the San Diego area Mission San Diego de Alcalá, all of the way up to the trail's northern terminus at Mission San Francisco Solano in Sonoma, just north of San Francisco Bay.

CyArk uses the latest in reality capture technologies, such as 3D laser scanning and high definition photography, to accurately map sites along the route. The field capture will result in a highly accurate record of the site which will be archived for the future and utilized today to develop conservation tools for professionals and educational materials

History at Risk
Running parallel to the San Andreas Fault, the sites of El Camino Real de California are under threat of destruction. Several original structures have already been lost to earthquakes, and many remaining structures are seismically unstable. With the loss of these sites, we not only lose a physical building, but also an important piece of California history.