Old Spanish Trail

Used with permission: www.oldspanishtrail.org Copyright © 2005,
2006 Old Spanish Trail Association All rights reserved.

The Old Spanish Trail, once thought to be the shortest path to riches between Los Angeles and Santa Fe, took traders and loaded-down mules on a six-week trek across some of the toughest country on the continent. From 1829, when the first pack trains set out from northern New Mexico, to 1848, when the traders stopped making annual trips, a lucky few made their fortune by swapping New Mexico’s woolen goods for the horses and pack stock raised on California’s ranchos. All who took the trail—frontiersmen and young boys with a winter to spare, a handful of hardy families moving West, military expeditions, Indian guides and conscripts—shared the adventure of a lifetime in the Southwest’s rugged back country.

The trail has been called the “longest, crookedest, most ornery pack trail in the history of the United States.” The 2,700 miles of trail route that wind their way from Santa Fe to Los Angeles pushed pack mules to the limit. In the first week on the trail alone, the mules scrambled, swam, or dragged their handlers through more than a dozen river crossings. By the time the pack trains reached Los Angeles, they had crossed dune fields in California, Nevada, Utah, Arizona, New Mexico, and Colorado, found their way around the Grand Canyon, skirted the continent’s harshest deserts at Death Valley, and slaked their thirst at Stinking Springs, Salt Creek, Alkali Canyon, Bitter Spring, and the Inconsistent River.

The trail takes its name from the old Spanish colonies in northern New Mexico and southern California that were tied together by the rugged route. Although explorers from Spain’s early years in the New World tried to find a land passage between her colonies in the interior of New Mexico and the California coast, the Old Spanish Trail itself was forged by Mexican and American traders in 1820’s. Only a few traces of trail can be seen today where hundreds of fast trotting mules and their tired muleteers once traversed the high country of New Mexico and Colorado on their way to California’s fertile trading fields.

The map above illustrates the many separate routes that developed through time as traders opened commerce joining New Mexican merchants, Rocky Mountain and Mojave Desert peoples, and the rancheros of coastal California.