Santa Fe National Historic Trail

Along the Santa Fe National Historic Trail

I became a historian because of the Santa Fe Trail. As a teenager, I hiked fifty miles of the trail with my Boy Scout troop. In the 1980s, I drove art to Denver and got grabbed by the trail again. To kick off this part of my Driven by History road trip, I will travel up the Santa Fe Trail and stop at several key places along the way.

I started my trail journey at the southern end of Interstate 25, near the border with Mexico. I traveled north along the historic El Camino Real de Tierra  Adentro (covered in the March 14th, 2016 blog). I drove north in the Beagle, through New Mexico and through my past. I punched through Albuquerque, where I grew up, and past Santa Fe where I became an adult. At Santa Fe, continuing on I-25, I left El Camino Real and followed the Santa Fe Trail.

Today, the Santa Fe Trail is a bi-national Historic Trail (created by Congress in 1987) that holds four National Park sites— Pecos National Historical Park, Fort Union National Monument, Bent’s Old Fort NHS, and Fort Larned NHS. Overall, the nineteen National Historic Trails cover over 33,000 miles that weave together the history and heritage of the United States from the early colonial periods through the Revolutionary War and nation building of the 19th century to the Civil Rights movement. The Santa Fe Trail was a main avenue of commerce and conquest in the 19th century which opened up the West as the country expanded.

The route of the Santa Fe Trail (Courtesy http://www.santafetrailresearch.com/)

The eastern terminus of the Santa Fe Trail started on the banks of the Missouri River near present day Kansas City. Six hundred of the nine hundred miles of the trail ran through Kansas, then went through Colorado on the Mountain branch or through the panhandle of Oklahoma on the Cimarron cut-off. The last 150 miles crossed northeastern New Mexico and ended at the ancient capital of Santa Fe.

The Trail freighters were hard scrabble men who muscled their loads across the prairies and over the mountains. Work started before daybreak to beat the heat of the day as these men yoked their oxen or mules. Traders made slow progress across the plains. Oxen pulled the specially made-for-the-prairies Conestoga wagons whose wheels stood as tall as a man and were loaded down with 5,000 pounds of merchandise. Wielding rawhide whips to encourage the plodding oxen, a good day’s travel on the prairies equaled fifteen miles and over Raton Pass, they often only managed to cover a half a mile. The iconic image of a Santa Fe Trail freighter includes him with his Conestoga wagon and a cigar in his mouth, given rise to the nickname of ”stogie” for the cigar. 

A Conestoga Wagon at Bent's Old Fort (Photo by Hunner)

In 1844, Josiah Gregg published The Commerce of the Prairies, which recounted his experiences as a trader on the trail. He wrote about the places and peoples he encountered, and he described the economic impact of the trade. On one of his trips, 100 Conestoga wagons carried merchandise that he estimated at $200,000. In today’s dollars, this amounted to over $4,000,000. This was a trail of commerce, not immigration like the Oregon Trail. The goods that entered Mexican New Mexico between 1821 and 1846 reoriented the people there away from Mexico and towards the United States economically, culturally, and politically. So when the Army of West lumbered down the trail, many New Mexicans were ready for a change of allegiance.

In 1846, the Santa Fe Trail changed from a road of commerce into a trail of conquest as the U.S. Army used it to invade New Mexico. With the conquering of this northern part of Mexico, thousands of New Mexicans had the border pass over them without moving a step, becoming citizens of the United States instead of Mexico. The Army of the West continued down the Chihuahua Trail to help prosecute the war, fighting in Mexico itself. We will visit the Palo Alto Battlefield where the Mexican American War started in a future blog. We will now visit the key parks along the trail from west to east.

The Army of the West entering Santa Fe 1846 (Courtesy http://www.santafetrailresearch.com/)

Pecos National Historical Park

One of the most majestic places on the Santa Fe Trail is the Pecos National Historical Park. As the gateway between the Rio Grande Valley and the prairies, the Pecos Pueblo was situated at a strategic point during both the pre-contact period as well as after Europeans entered the region. Native Americans had passed through this gap in the mountains for millennia and when the Chacoans dispersed after the 13th century, some migrated to the Pecos River Valley. Small settlements developed which eventually gave rise to a large pueblo around 1450. As a cultural broker and trade center between the pueblos along the Rio Grande and the Plains Indians, Pecos Pueblo played a prominent role for centuries. The Spanish explorer Coronado launched his exploration of the prairies in search of the fabled city of Quivira from the Pecos Pueblo in 1541, and a Franciscan priest built the first church there around 1620. The fortunes of the people of Pecos declined after that from diseases brought by the Spanish, from the turmoil of the Pueblo revolt, and from raiding by the Comanche.  By the time the Santa Fe Trail passed under the shadow of its massive adobe church and pueblo walls, the Native Americans had abandoned the community.

Fort Union National Monument

Another fort along the Santa Fe Trail lays in east central New Mexico. Just south of the junction of the Mountain and Cimarron branches near Watrous, Built in 1851, Fort Union housed soldiers who protected the trade along the trail, offered a quick respite to the Colorado volunteers during the Civil War who rushed to defend New Mexico from the Confederate invasion, and mounted expeditions to subdue the Plains Indians during the Indian wars after the Civil War. In 1862, the fort became the primary quartermaster depot in the Southwest, and many traders on the trail made handsome profits supplying the fort and its far flung military actions. Fort Union collected and then distributed materiel and goods to the other forts in the region.

Commanding Officers Quarters at Ft. Union NM (Courtesy NPS)

Bent's Old Fort National Historic Site

In southeast Colorado, in 1833, the brothers William and Charles Bent along with Ceran St. Vrain built a massive adobe fort. Bent’s Fort quickly attracted Plains Indians, traders, buffalo hunters, and Hispanics travelers who shared the comforts of one of the few places on the trail that offered some amenities. They also restocked their provisions for their journey to or from Santa Fe and Kansas City. Eighteen year old Susan Shelby Maggofin, a newlywed accompanying her trader husband, Samuel, arrived at Bent’s Fort in July 1846, following the Army of the West. Her journal of the trip, Down the Santa Fe Trail and into Mexico, offers a fascinating account of her journey. Out on the prairies during the first leg of the trip, she wrote: “There is such independence, so much free uncontaminated air, which impregnates the mind, the feelings, any every thought, with purity. I breathe free without that oppression and uneasiness felt in the gossiping groups of a settled home.” At Bent’s Fort, she suffered a miscarriage. She wrote:  “In a few short months I should have been a happy mother and made the heart of a father glad.” She recovered at the fort before she and Samuel rejoined the caravan on their march of conquest.

The entrance to the fort and the interior courtyard below (Photos by Hunner)

At first, the fort prospered through trading for beaver pelts with the region’s tribes. After the beaver played out, buffalo robes caught on as an economic resource. A costumed interpreter I met at the fort, Celia Dubin, said that the decline of the American bison started even before the massive kill-off perpetrated by European hunters. As an environmental biologist, a natural resource manager, and a science educator, Celia talked about how the demise of the bison began when the Indians targeted the females because they had shorter hair and so were easier to tan, but with robes still just as warm.

At Bent's Old Fort, I talked with John Carson, a living historian at the site. We sat on a rough-hewn bench under the south portal, out of the sun. He said he played two types of characters at the Fort-- a generic trapper, and Kit Carson, his great grandfather. He has worked there for ten years, coming from a nearby college where he taught college. John is a bit grizzled, with his greasy fringed and patched leather pants and his chewing tobacco. He filled me on the history of the fort which last from 1833 to 1849. As a respite for trail travelers, as a fur trading post, and as a way station for the U.S. Army of the West's conquest of the Southwest, Bent's Fort served many people. John invited visitors to experience how people lived 170 years ago at this unique unit of the NPS. 

John Carson above talking to a school group and Celia Dubin at her fire. (Photos by Hunner)

In 1954, the state of Colorado purchased the land and the ruins of Bent’s Fort. President Eisenhower authorized the creation of it as a NHS in 1960. After extensive archeological excavations in 1954 and 1963, the NPS rebuilt the fort on the foundations of the original one in 1976. They made and used over 160,000 adobe bricks for the reconstruction.

Fort Larned

The Santa Fe Trail had been a route of commerce and conquest for almost forty years before Ft. Larned was built. By then, according to Fort Larned’s Chief Interpreter George Elmore, about half of the freighting done over the trail was conducted by Hispanics. They now have an exhibit panel and mannequin about José Librado Gurulé who as a teenager traveled the trail in 1867 and passed through Ft. Larned. His story was recorded as part of the Federal Works Progress interviews in 1940 when he was 88.

Ft. Larned (Photo by Hunner)

Many people passed through the fort. George Custer, Kit Carson, Buffalo soldiers after the Civil War, and Col. Rockwell. Rockwell built the fort and had the unique distinction of witnessing two presidential assassinations. He helped carry Lincoln’s barely alive body from Ford’s Theater, and he also attended Garfield when he was shot and died.

George concluded that phenomenal stories come from the people who were at Ft. Larned, that each room tells a story. Indeed from the barracks recreation with bunks that slept two to a level and uniforms and rifles hugging the walls to warehouses and officers’ quarters, the tales of the people stationed here and the travelers passing through recount the drive and might that inserted Europeans into the Great Plains and the Southwest, into places previously the abode of Native Americans and the Spanish.

Barrack room for enlisted men at Ft. Larned (Photo by Hunner)

The Importance of the Santa Fe Trail

The Santa Fe Trail opened up the southwest to commerce and then conquest, resulting in the annexation of half of Mexico to the United States in 1846. The trail also helped with the expansion of the United States into the Pacific Northwest. The thousands of Santa Fe Trail wagons that transported thousands of tons of goods across difficult terrain perfected the technique of this form of conveyance. The Conestoga wagons, the organization of the train, the trail blazing, and the way that people traversed unknown territory were first tried and improved along the Santa Fe Trail. This technique of overland traveling then was used on the Oregon and California Trails. Without the trial and error along the way to Santa Fe, thousands of immigrants who went to Oregon and California beginning in the 1840s might have perished on the way. The tens of thousands of people who immigrated to the Willamette Valley in Oregon and other points in the northwest in the 1830s and 1840s and who rushed to the gold fields of California and Nevada after 1849 used the tried and true methods of trail travel first perfected on the way to Santa Fe.

At the end of the Santa Fe Trail, I say good bye to the Beagle. It has been a great way to see the trail and its historic sites and many thanks go to Nancy and Peter for lending it to me.

The HMS Beagle at Bent's Old Fort