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.