Jornada del Muerto was the name given by the Spanish conquistadors to a desert basin in New Mexico and the almost waterless 90-mile (140 km) trail across it, beginning north of Las Cruces and ending south of Socorro. The name translates from Spanish as "Dead Man's Journey" or "Route of the Dead Man". The trail was part of the Camino Real de Tierra Adentro which led northward from central colonial New Spain, present-day Mexico, to the farthest reaches of the viceroyalty in northern Nuevo México Province.