The Great Wagon Road to the Southwest
Santa Fe Trail 1821-1880
It all started over trade that promised great profits. Once Mexico won independence from Spain in 1821 Americans were welcomed and encouraged to trade. Trade quickly flourished, creating opportunities and profits linking the economies of Missouri and Mexico.
The Santa Fe Trade developed into a complex web of international business, bringing together a cultural mosaic of individuals who cooperated - and at times clashed. Caught in the middle was the rich culture of the Plains Indian people.
The obstacles teamsters faced were 781 miles of semi-arid prairies, storms, flooded rivers, wildfires, dust, plaques of gnats and mosquitoes, mud, Comanches, Kiowas, Cheyennes, Arapahos, and Apaches. Freight wagons could make the trip one-way - with luck - in eight weeks.
For 60 years the Santa Fe Trail was one of the most important overland trade routes in the world.
The United States Army depended on freight shipments from the East to supply posts throughout the Southwest. Following the Mexican-American War (1846-1848) most of the American freight was military. Mexican freighters bound east dominated the civilian trade.
Fort Larned sits 20 days' travel west of the Missouri River steamboat landings. Troops here helped guard the tens of millions of dollars of Santa Fe Trail traffic that crossed the Great Plains each year.
The whole distance from the settlements on Missouri to the Mountains in the neighborhood of Santa Fe is a prairie country, with no obstruction to the route...A good wagon road can...be traced out [with] a sufficient supply of fuel and water...at all seasons, except in winter.
Alphonse Wetmore, Missouri gazetteer, 1824
Courtesy hmdb.org
