The Old Trail to Santa Fe: Collected Essays

by Marc Simmons

"The trail experience begat a fierce passion for prairie travel," wrote Josiah Gregg after journeying overland on the Santa Fe Trail in the 1840s. That same appeal is evoked anew in the pieces by Marc Simmons collected in this volume. Drawing upon his own many trips along the Trail, Simmons re-creates trail life as experienced by the original travelers. He begins with an overview of the Trail's history to conjure up images of the journey west in rumbling wagons. He further kindles our imagination with twenty vignettes of people, places, and events.
Still visible today, especially in northeast New Mexico, are ruts cut by wagon wheels carrying America's pioneers to the Southwest. These tracks remain as sentinels, forever guarding the past and the memory of those who journeyed over the Trail; for Simmons they are a link to the adventure, discovery, and tragedy faced by everyone making the six-week trip to Santa Fe. His recreation of life in a wagon train, the trip, and the travelers brings all these vividly and memorably to life.

200 pages, Hardcover

Published January 1, 1996

Reviews

[Joe Stack · Rating 3 out of 5]

This collection of well written essays covering facets of the history of The Santa Fe Trail and its people present a peek into the perils and adventures behind life on the trail and its allure to those who took to the trail and those who study it. Some of the essays, as the author points out, present some of the real conditions behind the “romance” of the west; even explaining why drovers would mourn the death of their oxen, but no one, “so far as the record goes,” has mourned the passing of any of their mules.

The essays are not all about fighting Indians, riding wagons, exploring and trading. Two essays, for example, were an unexpected delight with their topics. One was about poetry generated by people who experienced the trail and the other was what happened on and near the trail when comets and meteors were observed.