ATDTDA (17): Old Spanish Trail (460.5)

[Tim Strzechowski]

"He kept to the river up through New Mexico to San Gabriel, picking up the old Spanish Trail, down westward, visited each night now by a string of peculiarly clear-edged dreams ..." (p. 460).
 
 
"The old Spanish Trail"

Opened as a trade route between Santa Fe and Los Angeles, the Spanish Trail became a major link connecting New Mexico and southern California from 1829 to 1848. It was used chiefly by New Mexican traders, who found a ready market for woolen goods--serapes, rugs, blankets, bedspreads, yardage--in the California settlements. Pack trains with as many as a hundred traders left Santa Fe in annual caravans. The textiles were exchanged in California for horses and mules, which were then marketed in New Mexico. Traders returning to Santa Fe often drove as many as a thousand or more animals, some of them, perhaps, having been stolen from the herds of the California missions and ranchos. 

As they passed through Paiute country in Utah and Nevada, some traders victimized the Indians by taking slaves to add to their stock of trade goods. Women and children were in demand as slaves both in California and New Mexico. 

Occasional travelers followed the trail to California, among them American trappers, entrepreneurs, and government agents, as well as settlers from New Mexico. Mounted Indians were commonly seen along the eastern sections of the trail. 

The Spanish Trail consisted of a 1,120-mile northward-looping course traversing six states--New Mexico, Colorado, Utah, Arizona, Nevada, and California. Hostile Indian tribes--Apaches, Navajos, and Mojaves--prevented the opening of a direct route between Santa Fe and Los Angeles. To circumvent the great canyons of the Colorado River system, the trail was pushed northward to the open country at Green River, Utah. [...]

http://www.media.utah.edu/UHE/s/SPANISHTRAIL.html

http://www.nps.gov/olsp/

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Old_Spanish_Trail_(trade_route)


The Spanish Trail, a major trade route between Santa Fe and Los Angeles, has entered western lore as the scene of historic events and as a route for famous explorers. A large section of the trail curves north to pass through central and southern Utah before bending south again and passing out of the state. The trail has been traveled by ancient and modern peoples and has witnessed slave trading, emigrant parties, Indian massacres, and superhighway construction.

The Spanish Trail measures 1,120 miles long and passes through New Mexico, Colorado, Utah, Arizona, Nevada, and California. The seemingly roundabout path resulted from human and natural obstacles; sometimes hostile Apache, Navajo, and Mojave Indians discouraged Euro-Americans from taking the direct southern route; and the deep, often impassable canyon country of the Colorado Plateau necessitated a detour far to the north. Archaeological evidence indicates that many stretches of the trail were well known to prehistoric Native Americans, including Archaic and Fremont peoples. The heyday of the trail, however, lasted from 1829 to 1848 when Santa Fe traders used the route to bring goods to and from California. John C. Fremont, who traveled much of the trail in the 1840s, assumed that the route had been laid out by the Spanish and so named it for them; many sources refer to it as the Old Spanish Trail. [...]

http://tinyurl.com/223jze