The Santa Fe Trail Association (SFTA) would like to thank artist Wayne Cooper for his thoughtful indulgence in letting us use his wonderful painting, The Santa Fe Trail, above on our new site! The original is Oil on Canvas and is on the 4th Floor Outside the Senate Lounge of the Oklahoma State Senate.

For those Santa Fe caravans that took the Cimarron Route, their passage through the grasslands of what is today’s Oklahoma Panhandle was dictated by the scarcity of water. The Cimarron River, which gives the route its name, flows through southwestern Kansas and northeastern Oklahoma. It was one of the principal sources of water on the otherwise dry “waterscrape” section of the Trail that began once caravans had crossed the Arkansas River on the Cimarron Route. With poor grass and scant water, the sandy Cimarron River, as well as infrequent oases like Cold Spring and Flag Spring, defined the landscape as one of the most risky sections of the entire Trail. Artist Wayne Cooper’s painting on the banner of our Cimarron Cutoff chapter page portrays the crossing of the Cimarron River at the Willow Bar crossing. For much of its length, the Cimarron was often without visible water, but it could frequently be found by intrepid travelers who were willing to dig in its sandy bed.

The Cimarron Route through Oklahoma also passes by the rock fortifications of Camp Nichols, built in 1865 by Colonel Kit Carson to help protect caravans from Indian raids—another peril that made this section of the Cimarron Route one that travelers seldom looked forward to.

Today, the remoteness and empty spaces of the region that were so challenging to Santa Fe caravans make it one of the best places for the modern traveler to capture something of the feel of what it must have been like to travel the Santa Fe Trail during its active days.