In Search of the Spanish Trail: Santa Fe to Los Angeles, 1829-1848

by C. Gregory Crampton, Steven K. Madsen (Contributor)

The book is about retracing the Spanish Trail between Santa Fe and Los Angeles

144 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1994

Reviews

[Zack Hall · Rating 4 out of 5]

Given Crampton's other work, I was expecting more of a history of the Old Spanish Trail. This has some pieces of that, but it's more of a travel guide. It has a lot of good pictures of the areas through which the trail traveled and it recommends museums near the route.

This book's main contribution to the larger history of the trail is that this is the first time that the trail has been fully identified since it fell out of use after the 1840s. Part of the problem is that very few of the people who used the trail left records and so Crampton and Madsen had to do their reconstruction from just a handful of documents.

[Lisa-Michele · Rating 5 out of 5]

Terrific step-by-step journey retracing the trail and making it come alive. These guys actually took the whole trail from Santa Fe to LA and photographed it for all of us. I am fascinated with the trail for a million reasons, including western history, roads, southern Utah, pioneers, and explorers, but right now I am researching a book on the Page Ranch in southern Utah so it was particularly timely. The Ranch is on a branch of the Old Spanish Trail, which wasn’t even Spanish, by the way! It was Mexican. Nevertheless, this is a well-done study of it, explaining that it was a mule and horse trail, not a wagon trail, and it originated with merchants, not pioneers. I loved all the maps, old and new, and the many sources they consulted to build out the story.