Camino de Cruces National Park, National park with colonial trail in Panamá Province, Panama

Camino de Cruces National Park is a tropical forest reserve featuring a historic walking route through Panama Province. The landscape consists of rolling hills covered in dense vegetation with streams and natural clearings throughout.

The Camino de Cruces was a colonial-era cobblestone road linking Panama City with the Caribbean coast, used to move gold and goods toward the Chagres River. The national park, created in 1992, protects 4,000 hectares of tropical forest and preserves stretches of that old paved route. Today the park forms a corridor between Soberanía and Metropolitano national parks.

The path reveals how trade routes shaped settlement patterns and daily movement through the region for centuries. You can walk where merchants, soldiers, and local populations once traveled regularly.

The park is accessible from the city and offers marked walking trails that you can explore year-round. Expect humid conditions and wear sturdy footwear since the paths cross hilly terrain with tree roots and uneven ground.

The park acts as a wildlife bridge between separate protected forests, allowing animals to move across larger areas. This connection helps maintain healthy populations of species that need to roam beyond single reserve boundaries.