Along the Old Spanish Trail

I don’t remember hearing much about “The Old Spanish Trail” (OST) from my history teachers five and a half decades ago, but then I was just a dumb kid daydreaming through life.
From the 1600s to the mid-1800s, Spain and Mexico ruled the American Southwest from their settlements along the Rio Grande River in New Mexico and up the California coast.
Santa Fe was the center of a vibrant economy based on sheep and their products.
On the western end, California was well known for breeding horses and mules and produced a surplus of new foals each year.
Unfortunately, the difficult terrain separating the two made trade next to impossible.
The expanse between them included high mountain passes, impossibly deep canyons, a couple of swift rivers, sandy arroyos, and sometimes hostile natives. Added to the challenge was the fact that the trail hadn’t yet been well-mapped.
An early scholar on the route, former BYU History Professor and Colorado State Historian Leroy Hafen, described the trail as “... the longest, crookedest, most arduous pack mule route in the history of America.”
Through its many years of use, there was never so much as a single wagon wheel crossing its entire length. Why? Because a wagon never would have made it.
Anything more technologically advanced than a horse or mule shoe or plain boot leather was too delicate to survive the trip.
The trail saw the most traffic in the relatively short period from 1829 to 1848, when it was the only overland route between the Rio Grande and the Coast.
Merchants and craftsmen in Santa Fe could easily pack wool blankets and clothing on mules to be carried, step by step, all those miles west to Los Angeles, where they were traded for horses and mules for the return trip.
Explorers, missionaries, emigrants, trappers, and military convoys also left tracks alongside the freight packers & drovers.
The idea of a trail first took root in the 1700s, when leaders in Santa Fe sent exploration parties west to scout a path. Before the Spanish influence, native tribes left evidence that the Europeans weren’t the first to cross the difficult terrain.
More than a simple trail, the OST was a network of routes totaling more than 2,700 miles between Santa Fe and Los Angeles, crossing portions of six states, including New Mexico, Colorado, Utah, Arizona, Nevada, and California.
I know, I know, I hear you saying, “Rob, there’s no way it’s 2,700 miles from Santa Fe to Los Angeles.” You’re right. Today, Google Maps pegs it at less than a third of that.
The difference is because the OST is less of a single trail than a route focused on prominent landmarks and watering holes along the way. The route chosen depended on the season, native hostilities, and a host of other reasons.
Back in the mid-1800s, no dashed line in the middle of a paved road guided you, nor were there any highway patrolmen mounted on fast mules.
The lack of patrolmen back then invited a more sordid class of traffic. Horse thieves frequently used it to transport horses stolen from California ranches.
Even worse, human traffickers moved kidnapped native women and children to be sold into slavery.
Most, but not all, of the landmarks along the trail in San Juan County are well known to us all.
Piute Spring on the Ucolo Road, a mile west of the Colorado line, provided the first rest stop in Utah.
When the OST was the main route through the county, Monticello didn’t exist, and Piute Spring was the only place to water up (sorry Cave Guy, I checked; no cold Pepsi).
If a traveler didn’t stop for a drink, he faced a serious risk of ending up as a grease spot underneath a few bones in the sand somewhere in Dry Valley.
From Piute Spring, the route crossed the Great Sage Plain, this portion of it known to us as East Summit and West Summit, then dropped into Dry Valley via South Canyon, a tributary of East Canyon. This was one of those “choke points” that all travelers had to cross or turn back.
Though Church Rock wasn’t as close to the trail as other landmarks in Dry Valley, it was visible from many points and served as a navigational beacon, helping users verify their location.
How many of you have heard of Casa Colorado rock?
Driving from Monticello to Moab on US 191, you can’t avoid staring at it for at least five minutes as you come down Peters Hill, but you likely never knew its name or importance 200 years ago.
Though there is no spring at Casa Colorado, it is home to “La Tinaja,” Spanish for “jar” or “tub.”
In the beginning, God put Casa Colorado there to catch rainwater on its sandstone slopes to fill La Tinaja to save weary travelers of long ago from certain death. Thirsty men, horses, and mules could count on finding water there—but still no Pepsi.
From Casa Colorado, it was on to Looking Glass Rock, and across the hill to the Nipples.
From there, it roughly followed US 191 all the way to Moab, past St. Louis Rock (the one where the white Jeep is about to jump off a cliff), Kane Springs, and up Blue Hill. Blue Hill first earned its reputation as a terror to climb from those early travelers, long before a road was cut into the rock.
Once on top, it was a simple stroll into what later became downtown Moab, and across the Colorado and on to Green River and the rest of the distance.
The Old Spanish Trail gained modern-day notoriety in 2002 when Congress officially christened it The Old Spanish National Historic Trail, the fifteenth to receive that designation.
At last, a portion of the trail is still in use today by at least one San Juan County business. If you are reading this story on a paper copy, you probably didn’t know that it was printed in Santa Fe.
Each Tuesday afternoon, the San Juan Record emails the complete layout for the next day’s paper to a printer in Santa Fe.
Once printed, it is immediately loaded in a courier’s van for the six-hour trip back to Monticello, arriving before sunrise on Wednesday.
And Gary, cold Pepsi is available in many places along the route today — if you lack the good sense to drink Coke.