New Mexico, like Missouri, was the other trailhead state of the Santa Fe Trail, and its capital of Santa Fe was a principal destination for trading caravans from the U.S. since their first successful trips in 1821. While New Mexico was a province of the Spanish empire, trade with foreigners was discouraged, but with the founding of the Republic of Mexico in 1821, the new government actively sought trade with its U.S. neighbor. The New Mexican domestic economy had always lacked items like fine cotton fabrics, iron hardware and implements, and other manufactured consumer goods, and their ability to pay with silver from the rich Mexican mines to the south made them particularly attractive customers for traders from the specie-short frontier economies of Missouri.
With the outbreak of the U.S.-Mexican War in 1846, the Santa Fe Trail became a military highway of invasion, and U.S. forces brought an end to Mexican control of the region. Trade over the Trail quickly resumed, and New Mexico began its new role as a U.S. territory for the rest of the active Trail days. The final days of the Trail would end in New Mexico as well, when the railroad arrived from Kansas in 1879.
The two branches of the Santa Fe Trail, the Mountain Route and the Cimarron Route, rejoined in New Mexico after their split in Kansas. Travelers on the Mountain Route entered the state via the road over rugged Raton Pass, parts of which had been improved by entrepreneur “Uncle Dick” Wootton. As depicted by artist Doug Holdread on the banner of our Corazón de los Caminos chapter page, even with the “improvements,” the trip over Raton with heavy freight wagons was far from easy.
The two branches converged near the modern town of Watrous, New Mexico, and the sprawling complex of Fort Union, continuing past Hispanic settlements and the historic ruins of Pecos Pueblo, before it at last emerged from the passes of the Sangre de Cristos and into the plaza of Santa Fe. Although some adventurous traders continued on to the northern Mexican markets of Chihuahua, for most of the trail-weary travelers and their draft animals, it was the end of their first adventure over the Trail, and a prelude to the one that would mark their return trip.
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