Thursday - Colorado Springs to Grand Junction

Thursday –  March 24

NOTE: In an effort to get my memories recorded I have decided to postpone pictures until I return.

Colorado Springs to Grand Junction

As I was considering how to travel west from Bent’s Fort I decided to see how closely I could follow the Old Spanish National Historical trail route – about which I knew next to nothing. I had seen the trail drawn on the maps I was using to plan the Santa Fe Trail trip, but had not paid too much attention.  But I looked at the map and realized that by following the Spanish Trail I could end up crossing into California at the southern end of the state rather than Donner Pass.  So my basic route was to get to US 50 from Colorado Springs, then head west on  US 50, southwest on IS 70, the south on IS 15 and back to the Bay Area on IS 5.

I was going to start the trip on Wednesday, but when I looked out the window when I wok up I was shocked to see the whole area, and my poor car, covered with snow. After a little discussion with some of the people at the motel, and studying the road condition web site for Colorado, I decide I was not up to challenging the storm.  At one point, the weather cleared, so I changed my mind. I hastily packed my bags and then walked out the door of the motel to find it was snowing like crazy. I changed my mind and managed to get my room back even though by then stranded travelers were being turned away. So I spent the day in my room, eating frozen microwave meals that are stocked by the motel, and doing a little more research about the Spanish Trail.

With a little internet searching I realized that the Spanish Trail research was a work in progress, but there was a web site with a map and some information.  One of the branches of the Spanish trail more or less follows US 50 and at one point along the route the Trail and US 50 cross.  So I vowed to watch for that point. So I packed up again and went to the car. I, with some help from one of the motel employee, and freed my car from the snow the day before, so I left with little difficulty which involved scraping the ice off the windshield and refueling.  When I got on IS 70 to head back to the road to US 50 my windshield kept icing up on the freeway from all of the mud thrown up by passing trucks – the temperature was about 24 degF.  I could barely read the road signs, nor could barely see the off ramps. I finally got to a gas station and discovered that the windshield washer fluid had frozen so it was no wonder when I used the wipers they just spread the muddy snow in a thin layer on the windshield which then quickly froze and made visibility impossible.

While I was driving around blindly looking for a gas station all of sudden the passenger side window just went down. I would not go back up. So I just drove on for a while and finally located a gas station with a store that sold washer fluid. I pour what I could into the washer fluid reservoir n the car, washed the window with the station washer fluid, and started out.  Everything looked good, and ultimately the washer fluid thawed out so I could use it when necessary the rest of the day. So far this trip has taught, or re indeed me that (1)I cannot tell a carrot field from an orange grove, (2)I cannot speak the language of the 50% of the people in California who know the difference and actually arrange for me to eat those things, and (3)I don’t know the first thing about driving in cold, snowy weather. But, I started out on the next leg with a clear windshield and my eyes peeled for any evidence of the Old Spanish Historical National Trail.

The first adventure after getting to US 50 was Monarch Pass – an 11 foot pass through the mountains where there was blowing snow and many “Ice may be present – use caution” signs. Since I really have no idea what that sign means the only caution I could think of was the bourbon packed away in the knap sack in the back of my car. I didn’t think that was what they meant so I just pressed on and got over the pass without any difficulty.

The AAA map of Colorado and Wyoming shows a small town called Parlin near the Intersection of US 50 and Colorado State 114 where the trail crosses the road (how they know that, I am not sure).  The town is essentially a Post Office building and maybe one or two others. I drove through the town and back again but saw no evidence of either people of the Spanish Trail.

I continued west on US 50 which follows the Gunnison River through a broad valley which looked to be a frozen field but actually is a reservoir with a small dam at the western edge.  AS the river flows into the reservoir there are large chunks of the snow which have broken off and make the scene look like something out of the arctic. The entire surface of the water was frozen, although it was thawing around the edge and the ice looked pretty thin in many places.

As I drove on I saw many interesting sights: An invitation to visit a “Historical Museum” and the associated attraction  - “The exotic World of tropical Insects.” There was a sign inviting the traveler to join the Gold Belt Tour – which turns out to be a driving tour of the Colorado Gold Rush era. [http://www.goldbeltbyway.com/ accessed 3/25/16]. In the town of Poncha Springs there was a business that advertised “Real Taxidermy – Making your Memories Real for a Lifetime.” I was reminded of the buffalo, mountain lion, antelope, and deer heads in the St. James Hotel in Cimarron.

In another little town as I entered I saw a quite elaborate electric sign with flashing lights and moving messages that read “Bonnie’s Car Crusher” and below that Happy Easter.”  On the other end of town was another business “total Auto Repair” which perhaps was misnomer based on the vehicles in the lot apparently awaiting Bonnie’s tender touch.

After another hour or so I was in Grand Junction Colorado. Here is the junction of the Gunnison and Colorado Rivers. The Colorado was formerly called the “Grand” river, hence the name of the town.  It is a pretty big town on the western slope of the Rockies and on the way there I saw may tourist attractions: rock climbing, zip lining, bike riding, fishing, ATV touring, river rafting, and wine tasting.

Tuesday - Cimaron to Colorado Springs

Tuesday - March 22

Cimarron to Colorado Springs

 NOTE: In an effort to get my memories recorded I have decided to postpone pictures until I return.

Today will be the last day of my eastward journey – tomorrow I’ll head west.

But before I left Cimarron I was eating breakfast in the restaurant at the St. James Hotel and talking to this man of a certain age was also eating.  When I told him I was from California he said he had been there in the service stationed Travis Air Force base in Fairfield. We chatted a bit and he mentioned to me that the Philmont Scout Ranch was only 4 miles up the road and it would be “well worth it to see.”  Since he was born in the area I asked him if he ever worked there, and he said he had “cowboyed there in the summers for about five years.” He told me they had herds of cattle, buffalo, deer, and antelope on the ranch that were that it would be “well worth it to see.”  The ranch, I learned, had been given to the Boy Scouts in 1937 by Waite Phillips of Phillips Oil fame.  The ranch is somewhere between about 150,000 and 200,000 acres and it was “well worth it to see.”  So I took a drive out there and saw cattle, deer, and antelope, but no buffalo. Facilities included many barracks-like buildings for the Scouts, and quite a few other buildings for activities, administration, first aid, and whatever else the Scouts do there. I remember reading all about it every month in Boy’s Life, the Scouting Magazine. I recall as a Scout I always wanted to go three. At one point I had to make a choice to go the Philmont or to go with a group of Scouts to the International Jamboree in England – in 1957, I think. I opted for the Jamboree, but by the time I signed up I was on the alternate list and ended up going only as far as New York and the National Jamboree which was held at Gettysburg. But I was glad I drove out to see the ranch.  It was, indeed, “well worth it to see.” 

One of the goals on my trip was to travel over the Mountain Route of the Santa Fe Trail. This is the route taken by Becknell in 1821 when he took the first trading venture into the Mexican territory. The route comes along the Canadian River then crosses the Sangre de Cristo Mountains which are traversed via the Raton Pass.  The Rocky Mountains meet the Cristo range just north of the Raton Pass.  The pass itself is a very steep and rocky path, and proved very difficult for Becknell. But he was successful in getting through, thus establishing a trading route that, along with the more southern route across the dessert, served well until the trains came in 1879. (The conflict between the Santa Fe railroad, which was destined to become the second transcontinental railroad and the Denver and Rio Grande Railroad, which wanted to extend into Mexico, is an interesting story of railroad history.)

The Raton Pass saw the passage, in 18947, of General Stephen Kearney’s army as he marched to Santa Fe and declared that it was now a United States territory. Kearney realized that he was never going to achieve his goal of fighting the war in Mexico so he headed to California. He fought and lost to the Californios in the Battle of San Pasqual in what is now San Diego County, then proceeded north to Los Angeles and the final battle of the war in California where he defeated the Californios in the Battle of Rio San Gabriel and signed the Treaty of Cahuenga which ended the hostilities in California in January 1847.  The Treaty was written in English and Spanish by Jose Maria Carrillo, and signed by Governor Pio Pico and Lieutenant-Colonel John C. Fremont.  The Californios did not trust Kearney but demanded that the treaty be signed by Fremont rather that Kearney, even though Fremont was junior to General Kearney.

The Raton pass was had enough for Kearney’s army and it was a lot more difficult for the traders and their wagons, so the traders usually took the desert route, also called the Cimarron (also spelled Cimmarron) route because it followed the Cimarron River from southwestern Kansas through the Oklahoma Panhandle. This was referred to as the Jornada (journey) due to a lack of water for a week or more of the journey. I can attest to the desolation of the route having driven through the area a couple of years ago. The Raton Pass route was much improved in 1865 when “Uncle Dick” Wootten opened a toll road from Trinidad, Colorado, across Raton Pass for 27 miles.  When the Santa Fe wanted to build a railroad along his route they wanted to pay him the handsome sum of $50,000, but he rejected the offer in exchange for rail passes for his family and for a weekly supply of groceries.  The railroad fulfilled their end of that bargain after Wootten died in 1893 and until Mrs. Wootten died 43 years later.

I visited the Museum in Trinidad which has a nice exhibit of the history of the area, including Kearney, Wootten, the railroad conflict, the Santa Fe trade, and on into the post railroad era.  There was a volunteer working at the desk and an old guy came in and was bending his ear with stories about his grandfather and events in the life of his family.  I guess that listening to those stories is your compensation for volunteering at the museum.

I continued east from Trinidad to Bent’s Fort (properly called Bent’s New Fort, but actually properly called the National Park Service’s Reconstruction of Bent’s New Fort based on documents in the Army’s records.  The original fort was built on this site by William and Charles Bent and Ceran St. Vrain.  They had formed a trading company, the Bent, St. Vrain Company, and realized that they had to establish a place on the plains where Indians and other trappers could bring their pelts and exchange for goods or silver.  The site of the Fort, on the Arkansas River was convenient for Indians bringing buffalo hides, the most valuable commodity, or trappers bringing beaver, otter, and any other kind of animal hide they could gather. The Fort was located along the Santa Fe Trail which was convenient for shipping hides to either the United States or Mexico in exchange for money or trade goods from either country.  The Fort was a unique outpost on the frontier of western America and was a profitable venture for the Bents and St. Vrain.

The Fort was constructed of adobe bricks covered with plaster by a crew of Mexican brick masons brought to the area from Taos by Bent. The rain on the plains was a constant threat to the integrity of the Fort.  A crew of masons from Taos was kept busy during the summer months repairing the damage from the winter snows and spring rains. In 1849 there was a great cholera epidemic on the plains which resulted in the death of large numbers of Native Americans (as well as 49ers gravelling to California for gold). Ben abandoned the fort, and there are various speculations as to it demise: either Bent destroyed it so that it could t be used by anyone else, or the Indians destroyed it, or the rains destroyed it, but in any case it was destroyed.

Fortunately for history a US Army Topographical Engineer had been sent to the Fort to recuperate from some illness and he spent his convalescence documenting all aspects of the fort.  When it was decided by the Park Service to recreate the Fort they had detailed information that allowed them to built a precise replica of Bent’s original Fort.

It is now open and staffed by docents in period garb. I went on a tour with the docent which was fun and entertaining. He offered the parents of one teenage boy on the tour to take their son as an apprentice.  The parents readily agreed to pay the modest apprenticeship fee and said good bye to their son for the next three years.  The first job for the apprentice was to follow the Master and work the bellows in the blacksmith’s shop while the Master made simple wall hook.  I think the apprentice was having second thoughts about leaving home.  Next came the carpenter’s shop were he demonstrated the making of wooden spokes with a draw knife, the assembly of the wooden wheel, and the process of mounting the iron tire on the wheel that holds the 4 or 5 part of the wheel and the 10  or 12 spokes in a tight grip.

After the docent tour which included more areas of the fort than I have mentioned, I revisited several areas to take pictures, and then the gift shop. I bought some trade trinkets to use during my docent tours at the Oakland Museum – glass beads, and a round piece of chocolate, and one other little thing. I then headed back to La Junta and north to Pueblo, but when I got there I decided to go on to Colorado Springs. That was a mistake because a storm hit the area overnight on Tuesday and I could not leave until Wednesday.

Monday - Albuquerque to Cimarron

NOTE: In an effort to get my memories recorded I have decided to postpone pictures until I return.

Monday – March 21, 2016

Albuquerque to Cimarron

Today I started to follow the Santa Fe Trail. I left Albuquerque for Santa Fe about 0730.  My first task in Santa Fe was to buy a new battery for my Nikon digital SLR. I went to Target, Office Max, Best Buy, and a store that specializes in batteries, but to no avail. I have one battery, but the other has stopped accepting charges so I guess I’ll just have to be careful not to take too many pictures with the GPS sensor on since that uses a lot of battery juice.

Anyway, I finally headed North on IS 25 which basically follows the Santa Fe trail, but in the area between Cimarron and Santa Fe the actual route of the Santa Fe trail does not exactly parallel IS25 but is quite a way west.  The trail goes through Ft. Union, which is not on the map but is a National Historic Monument that I visited a couple of yes ago, and then heads directly for Santa Fe. Santa Fe was the actual intended final destination until the Mexican War broke out and Fort Union became the supply depot for the Indian Wars in the Southwest.

 

 As I proceeded along IS25 between Albuquerque and Santa Fe I saw a sign reading “Mormon Battalion Monument” - of course I turned off and retraced my steps along the frontage road and finally came to a rather impressive monument on the roadside.  I stopped to read the brass plaque and take a picture.  The inscription on the plaque had been vandalized. It reads, from an official document written by Lt. Col. P. St. George Cook in 1847 when he arrived in San Diego, “History may be searched in vain for an equal march of infantry. Half of it has been through a wilderness where nothing but [word defaced] and wild beasts are found. . .”  I guess that Lt. Colonel Cook was unaware of the tens of thousands of Native American who live in that wilderness, or of the hundreds of wagon trains which had carried trade goods between St. Louis and Santa Fe since 1821. There trek across the Jornada, following more or less the same route I drove in 2013 from Southern Missouri, and then through Oklahoma and the western portion of the Texas panhandle was indeed impressive.  It is not surprising that an alternative had been developed and was in active use for 25 years before his march.

The next thing I ran across as I was traveling past Santa Fe was a sign for the Pecos National Historic Park.  (A National Park encompasses a greater amount of land and often several sites, as does the Pecos NHP.)  This park is a monument to the Native People that live in the Pecos Valley which is in a cross roads in an area that is bordered by the Sangre De Christo mountains. Plains Indians and Pueblo Indians could meet in this area and exchange items that were desired by both groups – buffalo hides from the plains and clothing, food, and pottery from the fields and workshops in the Pueblos.

Excavations in the 1920s by the archaeologist A.V. Kidder revealed a remarkable site including an immense Pueblos, also described by early Spanish visitors, or multi-room dwellings, attached together and rising several stories high. Pueblos and Kivas (pits) were excavated by Kidder and his crews, and outlines of the original walls and foundations, in some cases the Kivas, are at the main site of the Pecos NHP.

The Spanish, in their never-satisfied thirst for gold and silver, appeared in the area as early as the mid 16^th Century, but were not well received by the Natives. One Native, a Plains Indian captive, agreed to escort Fernando Vasquez De Coronado to the plains areas where, he assured Coronado, silver and gold would be found.  In 1841 Coronado and his men set out to find the gold. After hunting fruitlessly for the treasure his Indian guide admitted that he had just lured Coronado into the trip, hoping to exhaust him and his men so that he could murder them. Coronado was not pleased and had the guide strangled. He and his men ultimately staggered back to Mexico City, empty handed and exhausted.

The Spaniards were not to be discouraged, however. They continue to press forward in their search for riches for their king and their own pocketbooks. Prospectors arrived in the Pecos area in 1581, and were shortly followed by Franciscan priests. The Indians and the Priests did not always get along well, but finally Fray Andres Juarez arrived in 1621. Under is direction a large mission was built. Following a few years of generally harmonious relations between the natives and Spanish their relations began to turn sour and in 1680 a revolt occurred, which include killing some priests and destroying the church.

Over the next 100 years the Spanish were not easily dissuaded from their goals, either wealth or religious. There was some moderation of the Franciscans treatment of the Natives, but by 1780 illness, warfare with other Indian tribes, and emigration to other areas had reduced the population of the Pueblos to under 300 (originally it was estimated that 2000 people lived in the Pueblos – maybe more).  In 1830 the Pueblo and the rebuilt church, a fraction of the former church, had been abandoned.

Returning to IS25 I traveled on through Santa Fe and to Las Vegas where I turned off and took some of the back roads that more closely approximate the Spanish Trail route. Other than a few signs saying “Santa Fe Trail auto route” or, in a couple of cases, “Santa Fe Trail – Auto Route” I saw no signs of the Santa Fe Trail.  Most of the land in the area is part of a few land grants – some well over a million acres.  These land grants, like the Spanish and Mexican Land Grants in California, were protected by the treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo. But, as was the case in California that did not necessarily mean that they became public property. Much of the trail in the high plateau areas (6000 ft) between Las Vegas and Cimarron I on private property. In fact, I did not come across a single place where there was any actual evidence of the trail except at the Pecos NHP where there a small wooden bridge and a sign that said “Santa Fe Trail crossing (trail ruts).”

After spending a couple of hours on the back country roads, and meeting less than 6 cars in the process, the road reconnected with IS25 for a short distance to Stirling. At Stirling I turned off on New Mexico 58 and headed for Cimarron and the Hotel St. James where I was going to spend the night.

Sunday = Phoenix to Albuquerque

NOTE: In an effort to get my memories recorded I have decided to postpone pictures until I return.

March 19, 2016

I arrived in Phoenix on Tuesday evening, just in time to go to a baseball game with Rich and Barbara who had been there for a few days. I stay there for more baseball games on Wednesday, Thursday, Friday and Saturday. I’ll spare you the details, which are somewhat covered in my mangled score sheets as is typical of spring training games which may have 30 players on each side at some point in the game. But just to make the point that I was there, the final scores of the games I attended were, I think:

Cincinnati(6) vs. Arizona(10)

Seattle(11) vs. Oakland(11)

Colorado(6) vs. LA/Anaheim(6)

Dodgers(2) vs., White Sox(4)

Now that those details are out of the way on Sunday morning I started to head for the Santa Fe trail. I actually warmed up for that on Saturday morning by going to a flea market in Phoenix. It did remind me of what I have read abut the trade fairs in Santa Fe when the traders from Mexico would come north with their wares (blankets, furs, pottery, and, everyone’s favorite, silver) and meet with the traders arriving from St Louis with their manufactured goods, cloth, weapons, and whatever else they thought would be of value. Much of the goods at the Phoenix flea market were a modern version of what would have been in Santa Fe: clothing, household goods, kids’ toys, tools.  Some things at the flea market you could not have seen in Santa Fe in 1830: Old cell phones and old regular phones, an endless variety of cases and cords for digital gadgets, stacks of mattresses (hard to transport on a mule), all manner of orange tipped replica and imaginative firearms hung on screens net to pink-tutu wearing Barbie-like dolls. Toys for boys and girls.  But clothing, clothing, clothing – probably very similar to Santa Fe in 1825. So the flea mafrket was a good introduction to the barter economy which characterized the 19th century and is still flourishing in the 21st.

With that introduction, I started off this morning about 0630 from Phoenix and headed north and east eventually to IS40 (also known in many places as Historical Route 66).  I have marked my route on this Google Map:

The country in these mountains certainly reflect the Wild West: Rye Creek, Whisky Springs, and “Caution – Elk Crossing” signs were a few of those that I saw. The license plate in the truck I was following for a few minutes reflected the true nature of the modern times in Arizona: “LKHUNTER.” I don’t think the driver’s name is “Larry.” 

You will  note that I left my intended route on IS40 to Gallup and took a detour north. I saw a sign that said “Hubbell trading Post National Historic Site” so I exited the freeway figuring it was right there somewhere near the off ramp. When I got to the end of the off ramp the sign point north – 39 miles.  I hesitated, realizing that that might mean an 80 mile round trip to see a pile of rubble. But was I ever wrong.

After the drive through the mountains surrounding Phoenix through the Tonto National Forest it would be hard to find a more fascinating landscape – dry lake beds dotted with small bush-like vegetation, high desert area (5000 ft. most of the way), pine forests (apologies to anyone who knows better the tree species – the only tree species I know is Christmas)., and a very rocky landscape.  But the drive to the Hubble Trading Post site was just as remarkable: A flat rolling desert with a road that was straight as the flight of an Apache arrow across the 6000 foot high mesa.  In some areas I could see the road probably 15 miles away, perfectly aligned with the section I was on, but a hundred yards in front of me the road appeared to drop of the edge of the earth and until I got the edge I could not see anything but the road rising out of the other side of the apparently bottomless pit.  I finally arrived at Hubbell Trading Post site in the little village of Ganado, named after Ganado Mucho a Navaho Indian Chief. After a few minutes of wandering through the visitor’s center I joined a couple of tourists for a tour of the Hubbell House given by the young Indian girl in her Park Service uniform.

Briefly, Lorenzo Hubbell was born in the New Mexico Territory. His father was an American businessman in the area and is mother was Mexican. He followed in his father’s footsteps because he was very friendly toward the Indians in the area, spoke their language fluently, and was a good businessman.   At one point he was hired by the government to translate documents into Spanish and Navaho.  About that time Kit Carson, then a Colonel in the U.S. Army was ordered to take care of the “Indian problem” in New Mexico and Arizona. Carson’s solution to the problem was to kill as many of the Indians as he could, bun their crops, burn their fields, and burn their houses.  He then forced them on a 400 miles “Long Walk” to Fort Sumner in New Mexico Territory.

The Navahos were held captive from 1864 until 1868 at Fort Defiance at which time the Indians, under the leadership of Chief Ganado Mucho, signed a treaty with the US Government which returned some of their land to them. In the ensuing years Hubbell established about 35 trading posts on the borders of the Indian lands, was married, and had four children. Over the years he and his wife died, the two brothers ran the trading post business but sold or closed many of the stores. Around the turn of the 20^th Century the home built behind the trading post in Ganado where the family lived until the last member died in 1957. The land was deeded to the National Park Service and the contents of the house went along with the other buildings.

The house is filled with typical 19-20^th century furniture, but most notably, Navaho blankets and rugs casually strewn about, dozens of Navaho baskets which are attached to the ceiling between the rough hewn wood rafters, and dozens of sketches of Native people done by the well-known painter Eldridge Burbank. Burbank was a frequent visitor to the house and is known for his paintings of the Indians in the Southwest as well as in the Northwest.  Unfortunately, photography is not permitted in the house.