The Old Spanish Trail connected Spanish settlements in central North America, running from Santa Fe to the pueblo de los Angelos in the 18th and 19th century. It developed slowly beginning with various Spanish exlorations as early as 1776, and reached its heyday between 1830 and 1848, before being replaced by new trails blazed during the Mexican War of 1845-1848.
The trail actually consisted of several different routes, many overlapping, crisscrossing, and parallel to each other, for various portions of the route. From Santa Fe, the trail actually is divided and recognized today as four generally parallel routes. Even with this divergence, all of the trails passed through all of the states that the trail ran through. Listed in the rough order of travel, the states are:
The Trail was based mostly on old American Indian trade routes, some of which had in use for 1,000 years or more, crossing portions of the Rocky Mountains, the Great Basin, and the Mohave Desert.
Departing from Santa Fe to California, the South or Main Branch headed northwest past Colorado's San Juan mountains and Mancos, Colorado, Dove Creek, Colorado, and Moab, Utah to near Green River, Utah. The North Branch proceeded due north upstream on the Rio Grande into Colorado's San Luis Valley and crossed the Continental Divide over Cochetopa Pass to follow the Gunnison and Colorado rivers to meet the Southern Branch near Green River. From central Utah the Trail trended southwest to the vicinity of modern St. George, Utah and an area now shared by Utah, Nevada and Arizona. It crossed southern Nevada and passed through the Mojave Desert to San Gabriel Mission and Los Angeles. Various trade goods, including woolens from New Mexico, and livestock, were shipped up and down the Trail, which connected with the Santa Fe Trail in New Mexico.
The section of the Old Spanish Trail that runs across Nevada from the Arizona border to California was placed on the National Register of Historic Places on August 22, 2001.
The trail is now listed as the Old Spanish National Historic Trail by the Bureau of Land Management and National Park Service, following its designation by Congress in 2002.
Portions of the old trail were designated as the "Spanish Trail" before US highway numbers were established, and portions of US 160 in Colorado and US 191 in Utah are designated as the Old Spanish Trail today. The trail is also commemorated by many local street and road names, and numerous historical markers in the six states.
The content of this page is retrieved from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Old_Spanish_Trail under GFDL
