Behind the Name

A sendero is a cleared pathway (always in a straight line) through the woods or brush lands of south Texas and Mexico, often several miles long. Not until bulldozers were used for oil and gas exploration did senderos become commonplace. Most senderos are from twenty to fifty feet wide, though some are as much as fifty yards across. Hunters often set up blinds (shooting towers) along senderos to harvest deer as the animals cross. In the book A Vaquero of the Brush Country, John D. Young and J. Frank Dobie write: "I have sought to open a sendero, as we say on the border - a clearing - that will allow people to behold some of the secrets that the brush has hidden." - Arturo Longoria