Road trip 2017 - Day 2

 March 28

My intention today was to go to Fort Wingate in Gallup, then head north to Farmington, New M Mexico, for the first contact with the Old Spanish Trail. But as I drove into Gallup last night I saw a sign for the El Morro National Monument that intrigued me.  So I looked it up and immediately decided that I wanted to go there. I looked again at Fort Wingate web sites and realized that almost all of the Fort from the 19^th Century was gone.  The Fort was certainly important to the west since it was built in 1865 but it has undergone many changes over time. Further it had no connection with the Old Spanish Trail so I decided to skip the Fort and head directly to El Morro.

El Morro

When I got started in the morning it was cold – 34 degreesF.  I headed south from Gallup along NM route 602 then southeast through the Zuni Indian Reservation then to El Morro which is in, or adjacent to, the Ramah Navaho Indian Reservation. El Morro is a large rock (sandstone) prominence that has a nice pool of water at its base formed by rainwater runoff.  

This was a treasure for early travelers in the area.  Petroglyphs on the rock prove that the Indians were the first to leave their mark on the rock. A Spanish expedition, headed by Antonio de Espejo, went to the area in 1583 in effort to find two Spanish priests who had gone their before and had not returned. They found that the priests had been killed and on March 11, 1583, Espejo recorded that he stopped at what he called El Estanque de Peño, (The pool at the great rock). El Morro stood sentinel to early attempts by Spain to control the region, including the expeditions of Don Juan de Oñate between 1598 and 1605. The Spanish efforts were ended by a revolt of the Natives in 1680, but Spanish efforts resumed by the Reconquest by Don Diego de Vargas in 1792. Vargas inscribed his name on El Morro in the fall of that year.

Other inscriptions on the rock document army explorers in 1851 and 1853. In 1857 a sight that must have surprised anyone in the area passed by the rock – a camel caravan.  This was an experiment by the army to employ camels in the southwest desert areas. Their passage was documented on El Morro.  Ultimately the Beale Wagon Road was established that passed by El Morro and continued due west all the way to California.  This route was paralleled later by the Union Pacific railroad, and later US Route 66 and Interstate 10.

I left El Morro as it was lightly snowing. The temperature had risen to a toasty 35 degrees so the snow melted as it hit. The elevation there was about 7800 ft., and in some areas the landscape was a semi-transparent white over the green foliage.  I continued northwest crossing the continental divide and then, strangely, recrossing it a few miles later.  That does not agree with the route of the divide on my map which only shows it intersecting with Route 53 once.  I returned to IS40 at Grants and turned back west to Thoreau and NM373 that took me to Farmington where I incepted the Old Spanish Trail.

The Armijo route of the Old Spanish Trail started at Abiquiu which is a few miles northwest from Santa Fe.  Located on US84, it is the site of Georgia O'Keefe's home and studio.  It is in Abiquiu that the southern and northern routes of the Old Spanish Trail diverge.  The northern route was developed due to the difficulties Armijo encountered on his original southern route - especially in crossing the Colorado River. I followed a portion of the northern route last year after leaving Bent's Fort and traveling west.

The Armjo route roughly parallelsUS550 which runs in a northerly direction toward Farmington and Bloomingtion NM. There are few roads ont he map as the trail passes through the Apache Indian Reservation so I just headed north on NM Route 371 directly to Farmington  after leaving El Morro.
After the Armijo Expedition left the area of the Aztec Ruins the trails meanders northwest, then turns southwest, then back southwest before it reached the Colorado River.

After a quick lunch I continued to the Aztec National Monument which is located a few yards south of the San Juan River where the Armijo Expediting traveled in 1829. According to Armijos records of his expedition, he started on November 7, 1829, and arrived at the San Gabriel Mission on January 31, 1830. He left Los Angeles on March 1 and arrived home on April 25. According to the woman I talked to at the Aztec Monument visitor’s center they determined from his description that the expedition traveled along the opposite side of the San Juan River from the Aztec ruins. At the time the Armijo expedition was there the extensive Aztec village had been buried in the shifting sands and was just one big mound so Armijo may not have noticed it.

Note the two men walking on the right

The Aztec ruins were discovered in 1859 and excavated in the 20^th Century and portions were rebuilt and stabilized.  Some of the wooden beams in the building have been dated to 1100AD by tree ring analysis.  It was occupied until about 1200 and then, for some reason, abandoned.  I have visited other abandoned native housing sites in the Southwest and I guess this is the one that is most well preserved, or perhaps restored, but it is not the largest at least what is now visible.  

The San Juan River

There is now a trail from the visitor’s center to a bridge across the river so curious people like me can say they walked on the path of Don Armijo – which I did.









Apparently after the site was discovered it was vandalized by souvenir seekers and some of the original stones were “repurposed” by settlers in the area.  It is now a protected site managed by the National Park Service and has been designated as a World Heritage Site.

After the Armijo Expedition left the area of the Aztec Ruins the trails meanders north then southwesterly before it reached the Colorado River. According to the map the only places where the Armijo route intersects with modern roads is in this area US Route 160 where the route follows the Marcos River which flows into the San Juan River a few miles west of the Aztec Ruins. US160 passes right through the four corners area where Arizona, New Mexico, Utah and Colorado aand crossest the Old Spanish Tail a few miles south of the Four Corners. I followed Route 160 north from Shiprock, and then as it turns southwest toward Teec Nos Pos and could find no evidence of any memorial or documentation of the presence of the trail.  The Marcos River was dry, so I just proceeded to Kayenta along UIS160 which in that area closely parallels the Spanish trail route.

The landscape in this area continues to be beautiful with numerous rock formation jutting up up from the scrub-covered flatlands in a myriad of wind and rain sculpted shapes. Shiprock, Courthouse Rock, Signature Rock, El Morro, and many others which don't have obvious names. If I had stopped to take a picture of eery interesting rock formation I'd stillbe at El Morro, but hereis a randon sample along NM160.


I stopped for the night in Kayenta

Road trip 2017 - Day 1

March 27

I left Phoenix this afternoon after watching the A's vs. Kansas City baseball game at Hohokam Field in Meza AZ.  Since the A's were giving up home runs at every opportunity and grounding out tot he first baseman the rest of the time, it seemed like a good time to leave.  I wan ed to drive to Gallup which is about 240 miles from Meza kin time to get to bed.  I am there now.
It was, indeed, a most interesting drive. In addition to the wide open spaces, the huge vistas that are not obscured by 60 foot tall redwoods growing along the road side, the cumulus clouds that looked like they were about ten feet off the grounds and with their flat bottoms ready to crush the vehicles on the road, the juniper-pinyon pine forest that literally looked like a vast carpet stretching for miles over the hills and mesas, and the numerous "watch for elk" signs along the roadway, there was actually an interesting and relevant bit of history right at the beginning of the drive: Fort McDowell.

Ft. McDowell is now a little resort area featuring, not surprisingly, an Indian Casino. The Fort McDowell Casino. The Indian's revenge. Butt there really was a Fort McDowell and before that Camp McDowell.  It was the site of an encampment of the "California Volunteers" but this is not confirmed on an available on-line history of the California Volunteers who were formed during the Civil Wafr an d were, in fact, in Arizona.  Once they completed dealing with the Confederate Army in Arizona they were engaged in trying to deal with the sometimes very unfriendly natives in the southwest and protecting the rade routes in the area. This was, of course, the main job of  the US Army cavalry, the Horse Soldiers, in the 1870s and 1880s.  The Stoneman Military Trail connected Ft. McDowell with Ft. Whipple in Prescott AZ. This trail shorted the time required to get supplies to the isolated Ft. Whipple. Originally Ft. McDowell was a fairly elaborate installation and was expected to be able to withstand Indian raids.  But heavy rains soon after construction of the Fort was complete did what the Indians were not supposed to be able to do- destroy the fort.

Tomorrow I head a little further east and north to Farmington, NM, were the highway and the Old Spanish trail seem to intersect or run parallel.

Road Trip 2017 - Intro

My plan for this year, after a week in Phoenix for some spring  baseball, is to do a little exploration of the area and routes where Spanish (Mexican) traders traveled  north and west from Mexico in the 18th and 19th Centuries and ended up in Southern California. The details of the plan are still a little vague. Various maps I have referred to show a number of different routes, many of which are inaccessible and the ease of access of those that are potentially accessible is uncertain. The roads, and this year's weather  may get in the way. My little Chevy HHR is not up to much heavy going,  so I'll have t check on road conditions when I get near where there are roads that trace the routes, and at least go to point overlooking the original trails.

I have been in Phoenix for 6 days enjoying nice weather, baseball games a few history sites.  The first history site a ran across was even before I left California. On IS8 between San Diego and El Centro. I stopped at a rest stop and noticed plaque on

 a boulder that announced that the site was a stop for the DeAnza expedition in 1775. The rest stop is called he "Jaime Obeso Sunbeam" rest stop. Jaime Obeso, according to a CalTrans web site that I found, was a highway worker for Cal Trans who was killed by a reckless driver in 2011.  I am not sure why the word "sunbeam" is appended to his name  maybe t was his nickname or a place name. I was interested, and distressed, to see on the CalTrans web site that there are a long list of highway workers killed on the job over the past few years.

Once I got to Phoenix I made a couple of visits to history sites: The Sharlott Hall Museum in Prescott and the Museum of the Horse Soldier in Tucson.
 
The Sharlott Hall Museum is a collection of buildings in downtown Prescott that includes some historic buildings that were moved there and some that were built on the site and some new buildings. It s an interesting place with some connections to California History.  The Museum is a product f the Civil Works Administration and work program that was stated early in the Great Depression: "The CWA was a project created under the Federal Emergency Relief Administration (FERA). The CWA created construction jobs, mainly improving or constructing buildings and bridges. It ended on March 31, 1934, after spending $200 million a month and giving jobs to four million people."  [ see Civil Works Administration accessed 3/25/2017]
ne wonders if the jobs that the current president is promising to create will be like the C.W.A. projects.
One of the houses is the first governor's mansion which was built for John C. Fremont who was appointed governor by President Rutherford Hayes.  The docent on duty in the house explained that the appointment was made to provide a sinecure for the destitute Fremont who had lost all of his money in business ventures, and Hayes wanted to recognize Fremont's contribution by withdrawing from the Republican nomination for president in the election  of 1860 in favor of Lincoln. Fremont continues in his ways as territorial governor by spending "[so] little time in the territory; eventually he was asked to resume his duties or resign, and chose resignation. Destitute, the family depended on the publication earnings of his wife Jessie." [John C. Fremont accessed 3/2217]

The second site I visited in the Phoenix area was the Museum of the Horse Soldier in Tucson. A small but very impressive museum with a collection of uniforms, firearms, and other accoutrements of the horse soldiers that existed in the area in the 19th century. Their history, of course, is complicated and controversial. That they were, at least in part, responsible for the genocide committed on the Native American in the area is certainly true. But the failure of the Federal government to honor treaties negotiated by the army with the NAs cannot be ignored. And the desire of other people to immigrate into and through the Natives lands is something that certainly did not occur for the first time in the 19th century. There are ruins in the area that date back more than 10,000 years are were occupied by people who probably replaced, and were replaced, by one means or another for thousands of years.  The fact that the current occupants of the southwest have survived for 150 years should not be used to presume that this is the last time populations in the area of been replaced, or absorbed, by newcomers.

This is one of several cases in the museum which displays pretty complete uniforms of cavalry soldiers.  Unfortunately there is no descfriptions of the dates or other information about the uniforms, but it is an impressive collection none the less







I will be leaving Phoenix area today, after watching a final day of A's baseball, and proceeding to Gallup, New Mexico. Tomorrow I will drive north to intersect with the route of the Old Spanish Trail that was one of the complex of routes from Mexico up to California in the late 18th Century.  The map below from the National Park Service shows the routes that have been more or less documented. I will be following the southern most of the routes as shown on the map.

 
Check  back on this blog over the next few days as I drive in 4 days what probably took the Spanish mule rains at least two months.