Review by Ed Quillen
Old Spanish Trail – April 1999 – Colorado Central Magazine
Old Spanish Trail North Branch and its Travelers
by Ron Kessler
Published in 1998 by Sunstone Press
ISBN 0-86534-270-9
MANY OF AMERICA’S early routes of commerce and settlement, from the Cumberland Gap Road to the Oregon Trail, get due attention from schoolbooks, historians, and the National Park Service.
The Old Spanish Trail is not among those, although it may get there someday. If that ever happens, much of the credit should go to Ron Kessler of Monte Vista, who has explored the trail in two earlier books: A pamphlet with an annotated translation of Juan Bautista de Anza’s 1779 campaign into Central Colorado, and Retracing the Old Spanish Trail North Branch, which shows you what you can find now along the old route.
The Old Spanish Trail dates back to the 18th century and the waning days of the Spanish Empire in North America. Two of its northern outposts — Santa Fé in New Mexico and Los Angeles in California — sat at the end of long and tenuous supply and communication lines.
Because a better connection could help hold the empire together, the Spanish authorities dispatched expeditions from both settlements. The resulting routes, however, had to swing far to the north to avoid deserts, hostile Indians and the Grand Canyon. Thus, the North Branch of the Old Spanish Trail went into the San Luis Valley and over Cochetopa Pass, then along the general route of U.S. 50 to Green River, Utah.
Kessler’s newest book, Old Spanish Trail North Branch and its Travelers, tells us what people found along that part of the trail. It’s an annotated anthology of 16 trail accounts that start with the Vargas entrada of 1694 and run through John Lawrence in 1867-80.
Each chapter of this book consists of the trail journal. There’s a chapter introduction to put the trip into context. The journals — mostly in the form of diaries — are laced with Kessler’s parenthetical notes which explain place names and the like.
Here’s a sample, from one of my favorites, the 1859 trek of Juan Bautista Silva. A drought around Santa Fé inspired him to move his family, along with 14 other families. They headed north with oxen drawing two-wheeled carts.
Just a noise is cause for alarm, but we have able and knowledgeable men, and all is put in order. (Ruida, which means noise, is the word used by Silva, so I would assume that one of the carreta wheels became dry and began to squeal. The men probably removed the wheel and greased the wooden axle with fat from an animal that they had killed.) Our road worsens, and if we had not marked pines on our first trip it would be double difficult to follow the main route. (This same route had been followed by Vargas and Pike, and some of it by Anza and Fowler, but Silva was the first to travel it with wheeled vehicles….) We determine that St. Joseph will be our patron Saint when we arrive and complete this act of our Savior.”
If you’ve ever been curious about early ventures into the San Luis Valley, you’ll likely find the appropriate journal here — Kessler has put together a collection that would otherwise require combing half a dozen big libraries.
At the end, he lists other accounts, like Dick Wooten’s sheep drive of 1852 from Taos to Sacramento, which used the Old Spanish Trail but were not sufficiently detailed to fill a chapter.
Yvonne Halburian’s maps are excellent, the index worked fine for everything I tried, Kessler’s sources are noted, and there’s an extensive bibliography.
My only disappointment came because Kessler limited the book to his topic, the Old Spanish Trail, and so he left out a fortnight of Anza’s 1779 expedition (Poncha Pass, South Park, Sangre de Cristo Pass) that wasn’t along the trail. Likewise he omitted Gunnison’s 1854 foray over Poncha Pass. I would have liked to have those portions in this anthology, because that would sure simplify matters when I need to find an early travel account about this area. But I understand why they were left out — books that don’t stay in focus can grow to an immense size and price.
This is a fine compendium which should be more than useful for the history buff. Much of it is also good reading in itself — first-person accounts of danger, hardship, celebration, and adventure in the days of la Frontera del Norte and the Western Frontier.
If you want to see the original sources of much of our regional heritage, from the place names we often mispronounce to the routes we still use to get from here to there, then add this book to your collection. You’ll turn to it often.
— Ed Quillen
