SANTA FE TRAIL

SANTA FE TRAIL. The Santa Fe Trail was an important commerce route between 1821 and 1880 that extended from Missouri to Santa Fe, New Mexico. The trail extended south from Santa Fe for an additional thousand miles through El Paso to the Mexican towns of Chihuahua

and Durango, following the natural roads wagon masters found along the entire distance.

Prior to the opening of the trail, the city of Santa Fe was supplied with goods brought by mule at great expense from the Mexican seaport of Veracruz. Pierre and Paul Mallet of Canada crossed the Plains to Santa Fe in 1739, followed by more Frenchmen passing from the Missouri River or from Arkansas Post to the Rio Grande. The American army lieutenant Zebulon M. Pike arrived in 1807.

American attempts at Santa Fe trade met with summary action by Spanish authorities, who arrested twelve men from Saint Louis in 1812 and imprisoned them for nine years, and arrested Auguste Pierre Chouteau's Saint Louis fur brigade in 1815 for trapping on the Upper Arkansas. After Mexico overthrew Spanish rule, news spread that traders were welcome in Santa Fe. First to arrive was William Becknell of Missouri, who reached Santa Fe on 16 November 1821, and sold his Indian trade goods at from ten to twenty times higher than Saint Louis prices. Becknell started from the steamboat landing of Franklin, Missouri, followed the prairie divide between the tributaries of the Kansas and Arkansas rivers to the Great Bend of the Arkansas, and then followed the Arkansas almost to the mountains before turning south to New Mexico. His route became known as the Santa Fe Trail. The Missouri River terminus later became Westport, now Kansas City. At the western end the trail turned south to Santa Fe from the Arkansas by different routes touching the Colorado–New Mexico border and another near Kansas.

Merchants traveled in caravans, moving wagons in parallel columns so that they might be quickly formed into a circular corral, with livestock inside, in the event of an Indian attack. Josiah Gregg reported that up to 1843 Indians killed but eleven men on the trail. Losses were greatest from 1864 to 1869, the bloodiest year being 1868, when seventeen stagecoach passengers were captured and burned at Cimarron Crossing.

Santa Fe trade brought to the United States much-needed silver, gave America the Missouri mule, and paved the way for American claims to New Mexico in the Mexican-American War. Estimates of the heavy volume of westward-bound traffic on the trail vary. Gregg reported in Commerce of the Prairies that 350 persons transported $450,000 worth of goods at Saint Louis prices in 1843. Lt. Col. William Gilpin's register shows 3,000 wagons, 12,000 persons, and 50,000 animals between 1849–1859, a large part of the number bound for California. The register at Council Grove, Kansas, in 1860 showed 3,514 persons, 61 carriages and stagecoaches, 5,819 mules, and 22,738 oxen. Federal mail service by stagecoach was instituted in 1849. Completion of the last section of the

Atchison, Topeka, and Santa Fe Railroad in 1880 ended the importance of the wagon road.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Boyle, Susan Calafate. Los Capitalistas: Hispano Merchants and the Santa Fe Trade. Albaquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 1997.

Chalafant, William Y. Dangerous Passage: The Santa Fe Trail and the Mexican War. Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1994.

Dary, David. The Santa Fe Trail: Its History, Legends, and Lore. New York: Knopf, 2000.

Gregg, Josiah. Commerce of the Prairies. Philadelphia: Lippincott, 1962.

Simmons, Marc. The Old Trail to Santa Fe: Collected Essays. Albequerque: University of New Mexico Press, 1996.

BlissIsely/h. s.

See alsoSouthwest .

Santa Fe Trail, caravan route from Independence, Mo., to Santa Fe, N.M., which from the time of William Becknell, its “founder” in 1821–22, until late in the century served as an important trade route, and caused the growth of such communities as Taos. Josiah Gregg and Lewis H. Garrard wrote works on its early history, and Harvey Fergusson's trilogy Followers of the Sun (1921–29) is concerned with life along the trail from Spanish times to the present.

Santa Fe Trail a 780-mile (1255-km) wagon route from western Missouri to Santa Fe, New Mexico, that opened in 1821 and was frequently used, mainly for trade, until being superseded by the Atchison, Topeka, and Santa Fe Railroad in 1880.

Santa Fe Trail a famous wagon trail from Independence, Missouri, to Santa Fe, New Mexico; an important commercial route in the 19th century.