Old Spanish Trail (trade route)
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Old Spanish Trail
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Nevada Historical Markers #31, 32, 33, 34, 139, 140, 141, 142
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The route of the Old Spanish Trail.
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| Location | New Mexico, Colorado, Utah, Arizona, Nevada, California |
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| NRHP Reference # |
88001181 (original) 01000863 (increase 1) 08000229 (increase 2) |
| MARKERS # | 31, 32, 33, 34, 139, 140, 141, 142 |
| Significant dates | |
| Added to NRHP | Utah: October 6, 1988 |
| Boundary increases | Nevada: August 22, 2001 Nevada: March 21, 2008 |
The Old Spanish Trail is an historical trade route that connected the northern New Mexico settlements of (or near) Santa Fe, New Mexico with those of Los Angeles, California and southern California. Approximately 700 mi (1,100 km) long, the trail ran through areas of high mountains, arid deserts, and deep canyons. It is considered one of the most arduous of all trade routes ever established in the United States. Explored, in part, by Spanish explorers as early as the late 16th century, the trail saw extensive use by pack trains from about 1830 until the mid-1850s.
The name of the trail comes from the publication of John C. Frémont’s Report of his 1844 journey for the U.S. Topographical Corps., guided by Kit Carson, from California to New Mexico. The name acknowledges the fact that parts of the trail had been known to the Spanish since the 16th century. Frémont's report named a trail that had already been in use for about 15 years. The trail is important to New Mexico history because it established an arduous but usable trade route with California.
The trail is a combination of known trails that were established by Spanish explorers, trappers, and traders with the Ute and other Indian tribes. The eastern parts of what became called the Old Spanish Trail, including southwest Colorado and southeast Utah, were explored by Juan Maria de Rivera in 1765. Franciscan missionaries Francisco Atanasio Domínguez and Silvestre Vélez de Escalante unsuccessfully attempted the trip to California, which was just being settled, leaving Santa Fe in 1776 and making it all the way into the Great Basin near Utah Lake before returning via the Arizona Strip. Other expeditions, under another Franciscan missionary, Francisco Garcés, and Captain Juan Bautista de Anza, then explored and traded in the southern part of the region, finding shorter and less arduous routes through the mountains and deserts that connected Sonora to New Mexico and California, but did not become part of the Old Spanish Trail, with the exception of some of the paths through the Mojave Desert. The Mohave Trail, first traveled by Garcés, from the Mohave villages on the Colorado River westward across the Mojave Desert, between desert springs, until he turned northwestward to the Old Tejon Pass into the San Joaquin Valley looking for a route to Monterey. Garcés then returned to the Colorado following the whole length of the Mohave Trail from the San Bernardino Valley over the San Bernardino Mountains at Monument Peak, down the Mojave River and eastward to the Colorado River. The same trail was used by the first Americans to reach California by land, the expedition led by Jedediah Smith in November 1826. The Mojave desert section of the Mohave Trail is now a jeep trail called the Mojave Road.
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