That Broad and Beckoning Highway: The Santa Fe Trail and the Rush for Gold in California and Colorado

James Mead did not follow the Santa Fe Trail to Colorado. He did move to central Kansas in 1859 and open a “ranch” in the Smoky Hill Valley. He makes various comments highlighting the role of the Santa Fe Trail in the emigration westward in 1859. Of trade on the trail that year he writes, “Any camping-place on the Santa Fe Trail was as good a point for business as the main street of a town. . . . The Santa Fe Trail was about 100 feet wide, worn smooth and hard by the broad tires of countless wagons. . . . Among others we met Colonel [William] Bent, with a train-load of buffalo-robes and furs from his fort up the Arkansas. Some of these trains were accompanied by merchants from Santa Fe, riding in carriages and carrying large amounts of specie.” (10)

James Mead moved to central Kansas in 1859. He did not join the emigration to the Colorado gold fields, but in his memoirs commented on the state of the Santa Fe Trail at the time. In this particular article, he writes, “At Burlingame the writer first saw the great Santa Fe trail, connecting people of diverse race and language, separated by hundreds of miles of savage wilderness. This huge trail, 60 to 100 feet wide, was worn smooth and solid by constant travel of ponderous wagon carrying 8,000 to 10,000 pounds each. Sometimes three wagons trailed together; from 10 to 30 constituting a wagon train; drawn by 8, 16, or 20 oxen or mules each; coming in from New Mexico loaded with wool, hides, robes, or silver, returning with almost everything used by man, woman, or child.” (91)

Möllhausen, H.B. “Over the Santa Fe Trail Through Kansas in 1858.” Kansas Historical Quarterly 16 (November 1948), 337-380. Translated by John A. Burzel, edited and annotated by Robert Taft. Accessed online August 27, 2012 at http://www.kshs.org/p/kansas-historical-quarterly/13286.

Although Heinrich Balduin Möllhausen travelled the Santa Fe Trail in 1858 – from Santa Fe east to Leavenworth, Kansas – a year before the great rush to the Rockies in 1859, his extensive and effusive diary provides one of the more detailed pictures of the trail at the beginning of the Colorado gold rush. In particular, he describes various towns and settlements which the “‘59ers” would encounter, including Allison’s Ranch, farming and trading at Diamond Spring, Council Grove and Leavenworth. Möllhausen had begun this trip through the West [he made two others] in 1857 as a member of Lieut. Joseph C. Ives’ exploration of the lower Colorado River. This expedition was abandoned in the spring of 1858 at Fort Defiance, Arizona. Mőllhausen and other expedition members then wended their way to Santa Fe, heading east from there via the Santa Fe Trail on June 16, 1858. Möllhausen would not have met either the Russell Party or the Lawrence Party, the two groups which traveled from Kansas to the gold fields in 1858. The Russell Party was already in Colorado when Möllhausen left Santa Fe; the Lawrence party had passed beyond the Arkansas Crossing of the Arkansas by the time Möllhausen reached it. He does not mention the news of the Colorado gold fields which was beginning to surface at the time. Note: This item is not cited in the text of this study.

Parsons, William B. “Report of William B. Parsons.” Reprinted in LeRoy Hafen, Pike’s Peak Gold Rush Guidebooks of 1859 by Luke Tierney, William B. Parsons and Summaries of the Other Fifteen. Glendale, CA: The Arthur H. Clark Company, 1941, 322-335. Originally published in the Lawrence Republican, October 28, 1858.

William Parsons was a member of the Lawrence Company which took the Santa Fe Trail to the Colorado mines in the spring of 1858. This is his firsthand and fresh account of the trip with details of weather, terrain, stream crossings, and encounters with U. S. Army detachments and Native peoples. It is a snapshot of the trail in 1858. Parsons was also the author of one of the better 1859 guidebooks, issued at Cincinnati in 1859, The New Gold Mines of Western Kansas: Being a Complete Description of the Newly Discovered Gold Mines; the Different Routes, Camping Places, Tools and Outfit; and Containing Everything Important for the Emigrant and Miner to Know.

Root, George A., ed. “Extracts from Diary of Captain Lambert Bowman Wolf.” Kansas Historical Quarterly 1 (May 1932): 195-210. Accessed online August 27, 2012 at http://www.kshs.org/p/kansas-historical-quarterly/13286.

From 1856 to 1861, Captain Wolf “served in Company K, First U. S. cavalry, serving with his troops on the plains of Kansas, Nebraska, Colorado and Indian Territory, and on a trip to Utah during the Mormon war.” (195) During the summer of 1859, Wolf and his men patrolled the Santa Fe Trail out of Fort Riley. His entry for June 10^th reads, in part, “Our summer’s work is to guard emigrants on the Santa Fe Trail.” (199) In the course of their duties, they visited [and Wolf briefly described] Beach’s Ranch on Cow Creek and Allison’s Ranch on Walnut Creek. He has routine dealings with the Kiowa and a violent encounter with a Pawnee. The command returned to Fort Riley on October 2, 1859.

Spring, Agnes Wright, ed. A Bloomer Girl on Pike’s Peak, 1858: Julia Archibald Holmes, First White Woman to Climb Pike’s Peak. Denver: Denver Public Library, 1949.

Julia Archibald Holmes, with her husband and her brother, traveled the Santa Fe Trail with the Lawrence Party, the second group to head for the purported Colorado gold fields in 1858. She provides an intimate and breezy account of that party’s progress along the trail in letters addressed to a friend, “Sister Sayer,” which were published in two eastern newspapers in 1859. Of her departure from Kansas, Holmes writes, “We were on our farm on the Neosho River, in Kansas, when news reached us that a company was fitting out in Lawrence for a gold adventure to Pike’s Peak. Animated more by a desire to cross the plains and behold the great mountain chain of North America, than by an expectation of realizing the floating gold stories, we hastily laid a supply of provisions in the covered wagon, and two days thereafter, the 2^nd of last June, were on the road to join the Lawrence company. The next morning we reached the great Santa Fe Road, and passed the last frontier Post office, Council Grove.” (14)

Udell, John. Journal Kept during a Trip across the Plains Containing An Account Of The Massacre Of A Portion Of His Party By The Mojave Indians In 1859. Los Angeles: N. A. Kovach, 1946.

John Udell crossed the plains via the Santa Fe Trail in 1858, but he was headed for California, not Colorado. As he explained in his journal, “During the month of March I was engaged in preparing to emigrate to California with my aged wife – she being in the sixty-fifth year of her age, and I in the sixty-fourth year of my age. Our object in starting on so long and dangerous a journey, at such an advanced age, was, to have the care of, and to be sustained by, our children residing in California, in our feeble old age.” (1) Though Udell’s traverse of the Santa Fe Trail was more or less routine, he does paint a relatively detailed picture of trail life for the 1858 season. His party took the Cimarron Route. As the editor of this journal, Lyle Wright, explains in his introduction, “At Albuquerque [the Udells] were persuaded to take Beale’s new road to the Colorado River, at which place tragedy befell them and they were compelled to retrace their steps to Albuquerque. . . .” In the spring of 1859, Udell resumed his trip to California, traveling with Beale’s road-construction party as far as the Colorado. (ix-x) This trip was beset with bad weather and altercations with Indians. The Udells eventually reached their goal, San Francisco.

Villard, Henry. The Past and Present of the Pike’s Peak Gold Regions. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1932. Reprinted from the edition of 1860. Accessed online January 19, 2012 at http://books.google.com/books?id=pxgeAAAAMAAJ.

Henry Villard was one of the leading railroad moguls and newspaper owners in America in the late 19^th century. But in 1859 he was a journalist/correspondent for the Cincinnati Commercial-Gazette, which sent him to Colorado to report on the gold rush. One product of his tour was this book, The Past and Present of the Pike’s Peak Gold Regions. While he never specifically deals with the Santa Fe Trail as a route to the mines, his account of the events of 1858, particularly regarding the Russell and Lawrence parties who did come via the trail, is valuable. He also comments on the general character, hopes, dreams and disappointments of Pikes Peak gold seekers.

The value of this diary lies in the unique trip Sylvester Davis took once he reached the Colorado gold mines in the summer of 1859. He had come via the Platte River Road. For reasons not given in the diary, he and several companions decided in late August to travel to Santa Fe. They followed the Cherokee Trail along Fountain Creek to Pueblo, proceed from Pueblo to Raton Pass, and took the Santa Fe Trail through Rayado, Ocate Crossing, and Fort Union. Davis never returned to Colorado, instead marrying into a local family in Galisteo, New Mexico, where he remained for the rest of his life. He presents a unique view of a portion of the Santa Fe Trail during the gold fever of 1859.

The subject of 1859 Colorado gold rush guidebooks is complex, though at first glance it doesn’t seem so. Booksellers, business houses, railroads and individual authors issued several dozen from 1858 into the early 1860s. Original copies of almost all of these publications are extremely rare, with many extant in only one or two copies. This situation was addressed by Dr. Nolie Mumey and Dr. LeRoy Hafen, who sought out, provided commentary and reprinted 19 of these rare guidebook from the late 1940s to the early 1960s. Dr. Mumey was a medical doctor and aficionado and collector of Colorado history. Dr. Hafen was Colorado State Historian from 1924 to 1954. Today these reprints also have become difficult to consult or obtain. Most libraries restrict their use and buying them is expensive. The following annotations identify the Mumey and Hafen reprints.

Dr. Hafen also collected and edited various volumes of Colorado gold rush material, including letters, journals, diaries, newspaper articles, and guidebooks. The volume relating to guidebooks is cited immediately below; his other compilations are treated in other sections of this annotated bibliography.

David A. White provides another source for commentary on and reprints of 1859 guidebooks, in the publications listed immediately below. His News of the Plains and Rockies is a multi-volume work; Volume 7, Section N, “Gold Seekers, Pike’s Peak, 1858-1865” is pertinent to the Colorado gold rush.

It is also notable that some guidebooks have become and continue to become available full text, online. Those available as of the writing of this study are so referenced.

Hafen, LeRoy, ed. Pike’s Peak Gold Rush Guidebooks of 1859 by Luke Tierney, William B. Parsons and Summaries of the Other Fifteen. Glendale, CA: The Arthur H. Clark Company, 1941.

This is Volume 9 in The Southwest Historical Series issued by the Arthur H. Clark Company. Hafen’s “Historical Introduction,” pp. 19-80, places the guidebooks in the context of the gold rush. This volume was reprinted as Pike’s Peak Gold Rush Guidebooks 1859, by the Porcupine Press, Philadelphia, 1974.

White, David A., compiler and annotator. News of the Plains and Rockies, 1803-1865: Original Narratives of Overland Travel and Adventure Selected from the Wagner-Camp and Becker Bibliography of Western Americana. Spokane, WA: Arthur H. Clark Co., 1996 - .

White, David A., compiler and annotator. Plains & Rockies, 1800-1865: One Hundred Twenty Proposed Additions to the Wagner-Camp and Becker Bibliography of Travel and Adventure in the American West, with 33 Selected Reprints. Spokane, WA: The Arthur H. Clark Company, 2001.

Note: All spellings, grammar, capitalizations, etc. in quotations in the following annotations are not corrected or identified, viz. [sic], but are as they appear in the original.

Allen, Obridge. Allen’s Guide Book and Map to the Gold Fields of Kansas & Nebraska and Great Salt Lake City. Washington: R. A. Waters, 1859. Reprinted by Nolie Mumey and LeRoy Hafen, 1953. Summary in Hafen, Pike’s Peak Guidebooks.

Allen devotes five pages to “Route No. 1, From Independence, Missouri, via. Kansas City and Westport, by Hall & Porter’s Independence and New Mexico overland mail route to Pawnee Fork, thence by Coone creeks, Old Fort Atkinson, Bent’s Fort, on Arkansaw, to Denver city at the mouth of Cherry Creek.” Three of the five pages are a table of distances. The text includes: “The road is fine and hard until it reaches Fort Atkinson, on the Arkansas river; from Fort Atkinson, portions of it is sandy and heavy, passing over spurs of sand-hills; it runs along on the south side of the river, until within 12 miles of the old town of Pueblo. . . .” Also, “The country between Pawnee Fork and Bent’s new Fort, is infested by roving bands of Camanchee, Cheyenne, Kioway and Pawnee Indians, whose hostile and thievish propensities greatly annoy emigrants.” Hafen, in his Pike’s Peak Guidebooks, notes, “As to ‘The Route’ the author [Allen] expresses no preference.” Hafen also mentions that no map from Allen’s guidebook is extant.

Combs, J. H. and W. B. S. Emigrant’s Guide to the South Platte and Pike’s Peak Gold Mines. Terre Haute, IN: R. H. Simpson & Co., 1859. Summarized in David White, News of the Plains & Rockies, 7:162-163.

Only one extant copy of this guidebook is available, at the Denver Public Library. White in his summary writes, “This is one of the few 1859 Pike’s Peak guidebooks written by someone who actually went over the ground in 1858.” He quotes Combs, “There were fifty-six of us in one train who left Westport and Kansas City, and every wagon was drawn by oxen.” The guidebook has a table of distances from Kansas City to Auraria “via the Santa Fe Trail, Arkansas River, Fountain Creek, and Cherry Creek. . . .” (162) White suggests that this was one of the more reliable guidebooks.

Drake, Samuel Adams. Hints and Information for the Use of Emigrants to Pike’s Peak, Embracing a Concise and Comprehensive Sketch of the Gold Region, the Best Routes, Points of Outfit. Leavenworth, Kansas: [no publisher listed], 1859. Reprinted in White, News of the Plains and Rockies, 7:443-456.

Drake’s Hints and Information is included in this compilation as an excellent example of a guidebook written to promote a particular town and route, in this case Leavenworth, Kansas, and the Platte River Road. After touting the Platte River Road, Drake asserts, “[T]he Arkansas or Santa Fé route, is notoriously unsafe for travelers. Its entire length is subject to hostile incursions from the most formidable and warlike tribes on the continent, and during the fall and winter passed, the Indians have been in undisputed possession of the route. The mails have been plundered and the passengers massacred in cold blood. . . .” (447)

Eastin, Lucian J. Emigrant’s Guide to Pike’s Peak. Leavenworth City, Kansas Territory: L. J. Eastin, 1859. Reprinted by Nolie Mumey and LeRoy Hafen, 1959. See also Hafen, Pike’s Peak Gold Rush Guidebooks, 229-234, and White, News of the Plains and Rockies, 7:243-294.

Eastin promotes Leavenworth as the outfitting point for emigrants headed to Colorado and favors the “Smoky Hill Fork Route” as the “Best Route To The Gold Mines.” His main objection to the Santa Fe Trail is that it is too long, compared to the Smoky Hill Trail. It tends too far south for him. As he says, “If the miner selects the southern route, he turns his face southward. . .” and, of course, the Colorado mines lie due west of Leavenworth. His guidebook is accompanied by a map showing the Platte River Road, the “Smoky Hill Fork”, and the “Great Santa Fe Route.” Hafen notes that only one original copy of Eastin is known to be extant. It is housed at the University of Kansas, Lawrence.

Gunn, Otis. New Map and Hand-Book of Kansas & the Gold Mines: Containing Descriptions

Gunn devotes much space to the prospect of the opening of an improved Smoky Hill Trail in 1860. He asks, though, “But how happens it that this route is not already opened?” His answer is, “The reason is obvious. The Santa Fe road has been a great thoroughfare for many years, for nearly 400 miles toward the mines.” With further reference to the Santa Fe Trail, he notes “For those outfitting at Leavenworth, the Northern [Platte River] route is a very few miles the shortest, but the Southern [Santa Fe Trail] is said to be the easiest road to haul over . . . and water and wood more plenty than on the Northern route.” (42-43) He includes a table of “Distances to the Mines” for both the Platte River Road and the Santa Fe Trail and the map appended to his guidebook shows both routes and lists the Smoky Hill Trail as “Proposed Route – Central Route.”

Gunnison, J. W. and William Gilpin. Guide to the Kansas Gold Mines at Pike’s Peak: Describing the Routes, Camping Places, Tools, Outfits, Etc. Cincinnati: E. Mendenhall, 1859. Reprinted by Nolie Mumey and LeRoy Hafen, 1952. See also, Hafen, Pike’s Peak Gold Rush Guidebooks, 241-246.

Gunnison and Gilpin clearly favor the Santa Fe Trail as the route to the Colorado mines. They do say that if an emigrant is in “the country bordering the Missouri River in Iowa and Nebraska as far as Council Bluffs and above, probably the best route would be by Fort Laramie [Platte River Road].” But regarding the Santa Fe Trail, they continue, “To all East of the Mississippi, and for a hundred miles west of it, the best route by far is by the great Santa Fe Road to Pawnee Fork, and thence following the Arkansas to Bent’s Fort and the mines. . . . This is the route traveled by the mountain traders for half a century, and is a well beaten, plain wagon road, the entire distance. There have passed over it the present season over ten thousand wagons, as far as the crossing of the Arkansas. . . . It is also the route which the stock drovers take to California. But to those who may not have access to those who are familiar with the route, they can gain all the information they desire from the reports of Fremont, Beale and Gunnison.” (8-9) The only “Table of Distances” provided is for the Santa Fe Trail and it is accompanied by a list of nine “advantages of the Santa Fe and Arkansas over any other route. . . .” (19)

Hartley, William. Map and Description of the Gold Regions in Western Kansas & Nebraska, with a Guide for Emigrants. St. Louis: Wm. Hartley & Co., 1858. Discussed and reprinted in White, News of the Plains and Rockies, 7:229-241.

William Hartley was a member of the Lawrence Party of goldseekers, the next group after the Russell Party go to the Colorado gold fields in 1858. White, in News of the Plains and Rockies, discusses the importance of Hartley’s guidebook and reprints it and its accompanying map in its entirety. White says of the guidebook, “Hartley’s was possibly the earliest of all Pike’s Peak guidebooks, it certainly was the first to offer accurate mileage tables of the Platte and Arkansas routes, and it had the best of all maps of the immediate diggings.” (229) An online copy of Hartley’s map can be viewed at http://www.stcharlescapital.com/firm/history.php. Accessed June 27, 2012.

Horner, William B. The Gold Regions of Kansas and Nebraska: Being a Complete History of the First Year’s Mining Operations. Chicago: W.H. Tobey & Co., 1859. Reprinted by Nolie Mumey and LeRoy Hafen, 1949. See also Hafen, Pike’s Peak Gold Rush Guidebooks, 247-251.

Horner’s lengthy guidebook [67 pages plus advertisements] is long on speculation about the Colorado gold fields and activity there in 1858 but short on information on getting to the mines. The Santa Fe Trail is dismissed in three paragraphs. Horner says the road is good and there are fewer streams to cross than on other routes. Also, he writes, “This route was taken by most of the emigrants who visited the mines in the early part of last year. They were induced to take this road, however, from the impression that the mines would be found more south, than they turned out to be.” (54) The only other route Horner indicates is the Platte River Road. There is no table of distances for it or the Santa Fe Trail. His map looks helpful and contains much information on what railroads to take to Missouri River towns, but his Santa Fe Trail is merely a line drawn from Lawrence to the Great Bend of the Arkansas, then west.

“How To Get To Pike’s Peak Gold Mines.” Harper’s Weekly (2 April 1859), 220. Reprinted in White, Plains & Rockies, 440-444.

This article in the widely read magazine Harper’s Weekly says nothing about the Santa Fe Trail route to Colorado, recommending only the Platte River Road. However, the map accompanying it does show the Santa Fe Trail, but interestingly the road suggested diverges from the trail east of Bent’s Old Fort, showing the route going up the “Sandy Fork” [Big Sandy Creek in eastern Colorado today, a tributary of the Arkansas leading to present-day Limon, Colorado]. Any emigrant following this route would have been in trouble, most notably from lack of water.

Marcy, Randolph B. The Prairie Traveler, A Handbook for Overland Expeditions, with Maps, Illustrations, and Itineraries of the Principal Routes between the Mississippi and the Pacific. See also Hafen, Pike’s Peak Gold Rush Guidebooks, 252-253. Accessed online January 19, 2012 at http://ebooks.library.ualberta.ca/local/prairietravelerh00marcuoft.

As LeRoy Hafen notes in his Pike’s Peak Gold Rush Guidebooks, “This volume is a general guide for western travelers, rather than one intended exclusively for emigrants to the Pike’s Peak gold region. . . .” (252) Marcy does consider almost every conceivable route to Colorado, from southern Texas, Louisiana, Arkansas and Missouri. His relatively detailed tables of distance include, “From Fort Smith, Arkansas, to Santa Fé and Albuquerque, New Mexico,” “From Fort Leavenworth to Santa Fé, by the way of the ferry of the Kansas River and the Cimarron,” and “From Westport, Missouri, to the gold diggings at Pike’s Peak and ‘Cherry Creek,’ N. T., via the Arkansas River.” He also discusses the Cherokee Trail, giving its general direction, but does not have a table of distances for it.

McGowen, D. and George H. Hildt. Map of the United States West of the Mississippi Showing the Routes to Pike’s Peak, Overland Mail Route to California and Pacific Railroad Surveys. St. Louis: Leopold Gast & Bro., 1859. Reprinted in White, News of the Plains and Rockies, 7: 324-334. Just the map from this guidebook is available at http://130.132.81.65/PATREQIMG/size3/D1073/1052467.jpg. Accessed June 28, 2012.