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Re-discovering the Old Spanish Trail
A RUGGED TRAIL FROM SANTE FE TO CALIFORNIA LED TRAVELERS THROUGH THE MOAB AREA NEARLY 200 YEARS AGO
Written by Rachel Fixsen
MOAB’S MILL CREEK PARKWAY PROVIDES A QUIET, OFF-STREET PATH THROUGH THE CITY, FREQUENTLY CROSSING BRIDGES OVER ITS NAMESAKE WATERWAY. CYCLISTS, PEDESTRIANS, DOG-WALKERS AND PARENTS WITH STROLLERS ALL USE THE PAVED TRAIL TO GET ACROSS TOWN OR JUST TO GET A LITTLE EXERCISE. BUT A COUPLE OF CENTURIES EARLIER, A DIFFERENT KIND OF TRAVELER FOLLOWED THE SAME PATH: PACK MULE TRAINS CARRYING GOODS FOR TRADE ON THE OLD SPANISH TRAIL, A RUGGED, ROUGHLY 2,700 MILE ROUTE, BETWEEN SANTA FE, NEW MEXICO AND SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA.
“Armijo Setting Up Camp” by artist Larry Eifert, depicting one of explorer Antonio Armijo’s temporary camps along the Old Spanish Trail
[Courtesy Larry Eifert]
Installed by the Canyonlands Backcountry Horsemen, metal silhouettes representing Old Spanish Trail travelers are seen in the northern San Rafael Swell near Castle Dale, Utah.
[Photo by Dean Krakel/Courtesy of Visit Utah]
“That whole path is right along the Old Spanish Trail,” says Rob Sweeten, Bureau of Land Management administrator for the Old Spanish National Historic Trail, of the route that was for many years the only way to get to the west coast from what is today Utah. “You’re right on the old road, which is basically the Old Spanish Trail.”
Sweeten uses the qualifier “basically” because the trail can be tricky to trace. It intermittently follows other trails; it branches and diverges, sometimes by hundreds of miles; and it was not a constructed and maintained trail, but rather a route guided by landmarks and one that sometimes shifted with conditions in weather, terrain, and travelers’ objectives. However, when Congress designated the route a National Historic Trail in 2002, to be jointly administered by the BLM and the National Park Service, officials determined a “period of significance” between 1829 and 1848, and set out to locate trail landmarks and evidence of travel. Visitors today can revisit sections and waypoints on the old trail and imagine what the journey was like in the 19th century. Many important and interesting points of the trail are in today’s southeastern Utah. An arduous trade route
The route got its name from an 1844 expedition led by John C. Fremont and guided by Kit Carson on a mission for the U.S. Topographical Corps. In his report, Fremont noted that the trail had already been in use for about 15 years, and referred to it as the “Old Spanish Trail.”
The earliest known route that linked California and New Mexico was blazed by Antonio Armijo in 1829. The southwestern region of the United States was part of Mexico at that time, and the new route allowed the provinces to trade hand-woven woolen goods from New Mexico for horses and mules, which were plentiful in California. Armijo incorporated trails and directions from previous explorers and was able to complete the journey, but it was a grueling trip.
“That one is crazy,” Sweeten says of the Armijo route, which traverses through present-day northern Arizona. Conflicts with Native American tribes also made this route prob-
A map showing the various routes of the Old Spanish Trail. [Courtesy of Old Spanish Trail Association]
lematic for Mexican traders. A more northern route – the branch that passes through present-day Moab – was established in 1831. The journey was also notoriously difficult. The last known person to keep a journal while traveling the trail was Oliver Pratt, who undertook a mission from the U.S. War Department in 1848. On the first day of the trip, he wrote about mules escaping, and unsuccessful attempts to retrieve them. Later entries document miserably long days in rough conditions. A Sept. 13 entry reports,
While a modern journey across the Southwest by air can be made in a couple of hours each way, a trade caravan historically would make one round-trip in a year, leaving New Mexico in late fall to cross the desert in the rainier winter season, ensuring water availability, and departing from California in mid-spring to take advantage of snow-melt for the crossing. The trail was also used for military expeditions, surveying expeditions, and for illicit purposes: bandits stole horses or kidnapped Indigenous people to trade as slaves.
In 2016, members of a California chapter of the Backcountry Horsemen set out to follow as much of the trail as they could “in the spirit of” the horse and mule riders of the past. Some of the trail is now on private land, or has been paved into highways, so the group couldn’t ride all of it, but they were able to traverse some beautiful and challenging sections. Stephen Schultz, president of the Canyonlands chapter of the Backcountry Horsemen, participated in sections of the ride in Grand and San Juan counties in 2017. He said this area is unique in that there are few practical travel corridors through the landscape, narrowing the trail into identifiable choke points, for example, at the Colorado River crossing.
Schultz remembers seeing very clearly how Old Spanish Trail pack trains navigated by “pilot rocks”: geographic features that marked the route.
“Kind of like the North Star,” Schultz says.
The horsemen and women in 2016 had support vehicles, modern camping equipment, and GPS, creating a very different experience
Rob Sweeten, Bureau of Land Management administrator for the Old Spanish National Historic Trail, on the Old Spanish Trail in Iron County, next to a cross believed to have been etched into the rock by early travelers of the trail. [Courtesy Rob Sweeten]
—Rob Sweeten, Bureau of Land Management administrator for the Old Spanish National Historic Trail
than that of travelers in the 1800s. Still, the trip was an adventure, and gave valuable insight to the BLM in locating the trail.
New Mexico and California were both annexed to the United States as a result of the Mexican-American War, which ended in 1848. The Old Spanish Trail gradually fell out of use in the following years, as travelers began to use easier routes to the north and south, suitable for wagons, to traverse the country between the east and west.
Tracing the trail
Sweeten is leading an effort to create the Old Spanish National Historic Trail app, which users can download for interpretive information along the entire trail through multiple states. Interactive maps, downloadable by county, have points of interest and trailheads marked. Users can click to read background information and see photos of things like inscriptions, artifacts or landmarks.
“The trail wasn’t actually a physical trail,” explains Dennis Brown, a trustee for the Moab Museum who wrote a travel guide for the Moab area section of the Old Spanish Trail, incorporating the journal of Oliver Pratt. “They used landmarks [like] the La Sal mountains to find their way across the Colorado River.”
Identifying and gathering information on these landmarks and other sites included in the app took a lot of research and ground truthing. The Backcountry Horsemen were able to provide data from their ride on what was the most likely passage through certain sections. Researchers also surveyed for artifacts or trail traces—visible old paths on the landscape—and compared journal descriptions and sketches from the past to the terrain. For example, sketches of Head Rock and Idol Rock in Emery County, made by geologist Richard Kern while he was a member of the 1853
Moab’s Mill Creek Parkway closely follows the original route of the Old Spanish Trail. [Photo by Murice D. Miller]
Stephen Schultz, president of the Canyonlands chapter of the Backcountry Horsemen, and his horse, Autumn Moon, investigating the Old Spanish Trail silhouettes near Moab. [Photo courtesy of Stephen Schultz]
Metal horse and burro silhouettes are seen at sunset near Courthouse Rock outside of Moab, an important waypoint and spring for Old Spanish Trail travelers,
[Photo by Andrew Mirrington]
Gunnison expedition, helped modern researchers identify those geologic landmarks and verify the location of the route. (Captain John W. Gunnison’s expedition traveled on parts of the Old Spanish Trail searching for a railroad route.)
“In the cultural surveys, one of the things that really helps is military equipment dated to particular years,” Sweeten says. Finding military-issue items or cans from meal rations that are stamped with a date or known to be associated with a certain year or time period helps tie a location to a particular expedition identified in dated journals.
Most of that survey work is complete and the BLM is working on publishing the map segments. The Emery County map is available now, and includes areas like the equestrian hiking trail along Green River Gap and various inscriptions and points of interest along Cottonwood Wash. The Grand County section of the map will be available in the coming months; the maps can be found in the free ArcGIS Field Maps app. Notable points
Several points in the Moab area are known to have been important parts of the Old Spanish Trail. Looking Glass Rock, for example, served as a telltale landmark. The feature is popular today for its unique beauty, and for a climbing route that leads to a rappel through an arch in the rock. According to a National Park Service feasibility study examining features of the Old Spanish Trail: “Near Looking Glass Rock, several segments of the dugout wagon road have been documented… The roadbed is cut into the sandstone bedrock on its uphill side and is built up with dry-laid sandstone masonry on the downslope side.”
While the Old Spanish Trail itself was not a wagon route, sections of it were later developed for wagon use, leaving more evident traces today. Another section where these traces remain is along Highway 191 near a roadside stop called Hole N the Rock, south of Moab. Along the east side of the highway, traces of wagon tracks and dugways are discernable; along the west side, built-up road beds are traces of the old highway that followed a similar route. Before the wagons or the cars, pack mule trains followed the same general track.
Water sources were, of course, critical on the Old Spanish Trail, and campsites with water were used again and again. The springs at Moab’s Old City Park served as a water stop and campsite. Courthouse Rock, north of Moab, offered the next available water source after the Colorado River, and was a reliable campsite during the trail’s heyday – and it’s still a campground today. The Backcountry Horsemen have installed silhouette sculptures of horses, riders and mules at Courthouse Rock and other notable locations around the West, to remind visitors of the old trail and help them imagine earlier days. Schultz says there are around a dozen sculpture sites in Utah. Even on a drive through town, the trail’s significance in Moab is seen in street names like “Spanish Trail Road” and the “Old Spanish Trail Arena.”
The Moab Museum is a certified site in the administration of the Old Spanish National Historic Trail, and has a map display of its main branches. Visit the museum or download the BLM’s app to explore the region through the lens of the arduous pack mule route that facilitated trade and transport in days past. n
“THE SCENERY IN THE VALLEY WAS THE MOST RUGGED AND SUBLIME I EVER BEHELD.” —Oliver Pratt, on an Old Spanish Trail mission from the U.S. War Department in 1848
