New Mexico's trails - those collective signatures of travelers across the desert landscape - gave birth to the rich history and magical aura of the state. As passageways for exploration, adventure, new religious notions, cultural exchange, commerce, warfare, immigration and high drama, the trails speak to the legacy of ancient hunting and gathering bands, nomadic raiders, Puebloan farmers, far ranging traders and spiritualists, Spanish conquistadors and colonists, Mexican settlers, and Anglo merchants, conquerors and pioneers. They recall times of daring exploration, wondrous adventure, terrible injustice and high drama. Traveling those trails today, you will discover the depressions and fire hearths that mark the remnants of 3500-year-old pithouse villages. You will find mysterious images scribed and chiseled on stone surfaces. You can visit the ruins of long- abandoned pueblos and communities of still-living pueblos. You will see the fingerprints of the Spanish on the architecture and artistry in historic plazas, narrow village streets and quiet churches and missions. You can explore the haciendas of the Mexican pioneers and the territorial homes, ruined fortresses, ranch houses and ghost towns of the early Anglos. You can see Indian dances and join Hispanic fiestas soaked in color and tradition. You can eat spicy foods, drink heady wines and world-class beers, and relish lively Latino music. In some areas, quiet and isolated, you can still discern the traces of wagon roads across the desert basins. Some of the more famous of the trails that ran through New Mexico include El Camíno Real de Tierra Adentro (The Royal Road to the Interior), Coronado's Trail, the Old Spanish Trail, the Santa Fe Trail, the Desert Trail to California, the Navajo Long Walk, the Goodnight/Loving Trail, and Route 66.

El Camino Real de Tierra Adentro

Measured by the antiquity of the human traffic, the migrations of populations, the flow of cultural currents and ideology, its role in Spain's Southwestern colonization (which began in earnest in 1598), and the drama of human theater, El Camíno Real de Tierra Adentro - with possible World Heritage recognition pending - ranks as perhaps the most historic trail in the Americas. It began in Mexico City and ended in New Mexico's Española, a distance of some 1700 miles. From the crossing of the Río Grande, on the west side of El Paso, to Española, about 25 miles north of Santa Fe, it has been declared a National Historic Trail. You will find it a rich venue both in natural landmarks and prehistoric and historic sites. It remains the principal corridor of commerce in New Mexico to this day.

Coronado's Trail

The exact route of Coronado's expedition across New Mexico and the Southwest in the early 1540's has long tantalized scholars, who have tried to trace the conquistador's trail from Mexico's Pacific coast village of Compostela to the plains of Kansas. Crossing New Mexico, his course apparently took him from the Zuni Pueblos, near today's Arizona border, past El Morro National Monument, El Malpais National Monument, the spectacular Acoma Pueblo, to the Río Grande (and the El Camíno Real de Tierra Adentro). He would spend two winters on El Camíno Real, at the Tiguex Pueblos above Albuquerque, near the community of Bernalillo. Between the winters, he led his expedition northwest past the Pecos Pueblo and out onto the Great Plains, reaching central Kansas. Today, you can follow Coronado's presumed route across New Mexico, visiting some of the most spectacular sites in the Southwest.

Old Spanish Trail

The Old Spanish Trail, like El Camíno Real de Tierra Adentro, a National Historic Trail, took shape from a network of prehistoric and historic trails that would connect Santa Fe with Los Angeles. It served as an important trade route from the 1820s to the 1840s, with the merchants of New Mexico transporting woolen goods to western markets and driving California horses and mules back to local markets. From Santa Fe, one branch of the trail ran north into Colorado, turning west then southwest toward Los Angeles. Another branch led northwest through Colorado's San Juan Mountains into Utah before turning southwest toward Los Angeles. Still another branch ran generally west, through what is today the Four Corners country then along the Utah/Arizona border, turning southwest across southern Nevada toward Los Angeles. Along the branches, you can explore forested mountains, the Río Grande gorge, sage prairie lands, Anasazi Puebloan ruins and the Navajos' homeland, Dinetah.

The Santa Fe Trail

The storied Santa Fe Trail, opened by merchant William Becknell in 1821, immediately following the Mexicans overthrow of Spanish rule, began in Independence, Missouri, and ended at Santa Fe's central plaza. One branch entered New Mexico at the high pass above Raton and another at the border between Oklahoma and New Mexico. The two branches converged at the eastern side of the Sangre de Cristo mountain range, then passed Las Vegas, the Pecos Pueblo (by now, virtually abandoned) and Glorieta (the future site of a decisive Civil War battle). It became the corridor for early trade between the United States and Mexico's northernmost territories and for U. S. troop movements during the Mexican/American War. Following the branches of the Santa Fe Trail across grassy rolling plains and towering mountains, you will discover a tableau of historic landmarks, communities, homes, forts, pueblo ruins and battle sites.

Desert Trail to California

From the mid 19th century, the Desert Trail to California drew travelers from Texas and the South to crossings on the Pecos River then funneled them through the Chihuahuan Desert to the Rio Grande River, near San Elizario, below El Paso. It followed the river to the El Paso ford, then turned upstream into New Mexico, on El Camíno Real, for about 50 miles, past Las Cruces and Mesilla. It turned west from the river, paralleling Interstate 10, passing through the historic Cooke's Canyon, entering Arizona near the Stein's Peak landmark. The travelers included immigrants to California, cowboys with longhorn cattle herds, passengers on John Butterfield's stagecoaches, Confederate troopers of the West, and young men out for adventure. Tracing the trail across New Mexico today, you can visit way stations for stagecoaches, walk the ruins of an isolated fort, and explore a ghost town near Stein's Peak.

The Long Walk

The Long Walk - the Navajo equivalent to the 1838 Cherokee Trail of Tears or the 1942 Bataan Death March - began in 1863, when Brigadier General James H. Carleton ordered Kit Carson to drive the Navajos from their traditional homeland - Dinetah - across northern New Mexico to Bosque Redondo and Fort Sumner, a near wasteland on the Pecos River in the eastern part of the state. The Diaspora of the Navajos began primarily at Fort Defiance, just across the border, in Arizona, and proceeded eastward (over several branches) for 400 miles, through arid canyons, mesas, lava flows, desert basins and mountain ranges to the hateful riverside concentration camp. The enfeebled, the injured, the childbearing mothers fell behind and died beside the trail. In retracing the Long Walk Trail, you not only see the historic sites from Carson's time, you will experience one of our nation's most diverse landscapes.

Canyon de Chelly, northeastern Arizona, where Kit Carson rounded up Navajos in 1863 to force them over the Long Walk, across northern New Mexico, to a concentration camp at Fort Sumner on the banks of the Pecos River

Santa Fe Trail, the pathway still visible near Rayado, New Mexico

The Goodnight/Loving Trail

In 1866, legendary cattle baron Charlie Goodnight and his partner Oliver Loving opened the Goodnight/Loving Trail, which began in the grasslands west of Fort Worth, ran southwest across Texas to the infamous Horsehead Crossing on the Pecos River, then paralleled the stream northward into New Mexico up to Fort Sumner. Goodnight and Loving came in answer to the call for cattle to feed the incarcerated Navajos (as well as Mescalero Apaches), to supply military forts and new mining operations, and to stock startup ranches. Later they would drive herds from Fort Sumner on northward, up into Colorado and Wyoming. The trail passed through the heart of a region that would become the venue for monumental cattle operations, violent range wars, rampant cattle rustling and incessant Indian raids, giving rise to countless Hollywood westerns. If you drive north on U. S. Highway 285 and State Highway 20, you will pass through Loving, Carlsbad, Roswell and Fort Sumner, seeing many reminders of the days of Goodnight and Loving.

Route 66

Constructed largely in the 1920's and 1930's, Route 66, the "Mother Road," became a paved monument to the despair of the Great Depression in the American heartland and to the meager hope of a better life in California. Extending from Chicago to Los Angeles, it entered New Mexico at Glenrio and passed through Tucumcari, Santa Rosa, Albuquerque and Gallup en route west. Imbued with its own distinctive aura and fable, Route 66 would become the last of New Mexico's true "trails." When America's economy, spurred by World War II, improved during the 1940's, worn-out Model A's and rusty pickup trucks gave way to shiny new Fords and Chevrolets, and the Mother Road took on the patina of neon lights, black-and-white tile, roadside diners (where waitresses called you "Hon" and served hamburgers with "everything" on them), and kitsch tourist courts (some with "guaranteed shark free" swimming pools). Today, traveling Interstate 40, which closely parallels the old Route 66 across New Mexico, you can still find vestiges of the Great Depression and of those heady post-war days in communities along the route.

Still More Trails

There are, of course, numerous other trails and branches of trails spread across New Mexico. For a few examples:

• Chaco Canyon's monumental prehistoric road system - with some segments 30 feet wide and 30 miles long -- radiates outward from the canyon's famed Anasazi pueblo ruins and served purposes that archaeologists do not understand, although some have speculated that the routes may have been used in ceremonial pageantry.
• A prehistoric trail, unnamed, parallels the western edge of the state's Sacramento Mountains, passing numerous prehistoric sites and the world-class rock art site, the Three Rivers Petroglyph National Recreation Area.
• Other unnamed prehistoric trails, marked by trade goods and cultural signatures, connected the Salinas Pueblos, in the central part of the state, with the Zuni Pueblo, on the New Mexico/Arizona border, and with Acoma, in the western central part of the state.
• Various trails from the buffalo plains to the east converge at the Pecos Pueblo, which became the epicenter for trade between the plains Indian tribes and Puebloan peoples.
• The Janos Trail, a Spanish route that overlays a prehistoric trail, served to convey copper ore from the Santa Rita mines to Janos, Chihuahua.
• The Comanchero trails, which extend from the Rio Grande to the Llano Estacado's eastern escarpment, brought together Puebloans, Hispanics and Anglos -- the Comancheros -- to swap bread and other goods to the Comanches and Kiowas for women, children, horses and mules those tribes had abducted and stolen from the settlements of Texas and northern Mexico.
• The Mormon Battalion trail, which the only religion-based military unit in U. S. history followed in 1846 and 1847, during the Mexican-American war, is a 2000-mile-long route that connects Council Bluffs, Iowa, to San Diego, California, and crosses diagonally through New Mexico.
  

History, Exploration, Discovery

Perhaps more than any other state in the U. S., New Mexico's prehistoric and historic trails provide venues for extraordinary insights into the human story, the excitement of exploration, and the potential for discovery. If you have a passion for history and adventure, New Mexico's trails offer opportunities that should not be missed.

Chaco Canyon's famous Pueblo Bonito, one of several communities that lay at the hub of a monumental and mysterious prehistoric road system in northwestern New Mexico

Rancho de Las Golodrinas, a Spanish-era village and now a living-history museum near Santa Fe, on El Camino Real de Tierra Adentro