Old Spanish Trail exhibit opens at Anasazi Heritage Center

Dolores –On the day after Thanksgiving the Anasazi Heritage Center will open a new special exhibit about the Southwest’s earliest and most-important historic trade route, which ran from northern New Mexico to the Pacific coast. The exhibit traces the trail's history through artifacts, maps, and images.

“The Old Spanish Trail: A Conduit for Change” was organized and developed by the Center of Southwest Studies at Fort Lewis College in Durango, Colorado in conjunction with the Old Spanish Trail Association, and made possible in part by a cost share grant from the NPS National Trails System Office in Santa Fe. It will continue on display at the Anasazi Heritage Center through October 2009.

The overland trail linked the burgeoning economy of the California mission and ranch communities to the pastoral villages of the intermountain southwest.  Ultimately, the Old Spanish Trail became a crucial part of the commercial triangle comprising the Santa Fe Trail in the east and Mexico’s Camino Real in the south.

Called "the longest, crookedest, most arduous pack mule train in the history of America," the Old Spanish Trail was primarily a commercial trade route linking Santa Fe to Los Angeles. Forged by Hispanic traders in the early 19th century but based on a much older network of Native American paths, the Trail was the first successful Euro-American effort to connect the Mexican frontier provinces of New Mexico and California.

Based on Spanish explorations, Mexican and American traders connected existing routes to form the Old Spanish Trail. Mexican trader Antonio Armijo made the first commercial, round-trip journey along the route in 1829-1830, followed by William Wolfskill and George Yount's commercial pack train of 1830-1831. Between 1830 and 1848, Mexican and American traders took woolen goods west over the trail by mule train, and returned eastward with California mules and horses for the New Mexico and Missouri markets.

The Trail north from Santa Fe split into several branches: The so-called Southern Branch passed near modern Mancos and Dolores, Colorado and continued northwest via the Dolores River into Utah. The Northern Branch followed the upper Rio Grande into Colorado's San Luis Valley, crossing west via Cochetopa Pass along the Gunnison and Colorado rivers to rejoin the Southern Branch near Green River, Utah.  From there the Trail trended southwest, crossing southern Nevada and passing through the Mojave Desert en route to San Gabriel Mission and Los Angeles.

The trail was neither “Spanish” nor “old” when western pathfinder John C. Frèmont coined its Anglo-American name in 1845.  After the Mexican-American War (1846-1848), new wagon roads on competing routes largely ended use of the Trail.

In 2002 the Old Spanish Trail became the fifteenth National Historic Trail. The National Trails System  includes major exploration routes such as the Lewis and Clark National Historic Trail and Captain John Smith Chesapeake National Historic Trail, commercial routes such as the Pony Express National Historic Trail and the Santa Fe Trail, colonization routes such as the Oregon and California National  Historic Trails and the Camino Real de Tierra Adentro National Historic Trail, and commemorations of nationally-significant events such as the Selma to Montgomery National Historic Trail, and the Nez Perce/Nee Me Poo National Historic Trail.

The Bureau of Land Management Anasazi Heritage Center is 3 miles west of Dolores on State Highway 184, and is open daily at no charge from 10 to 4 (November through February). For more information, call the Center at (970) 882-5600 or visit the web site at www.blm.gov/ahc.

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