The Santa Fe Trail
The buffalo migration impacted the smooth and mild Santa Fe Trail. On September 1, 1821, Captain William Becknell left Arrow Rock, Missouri to explore the southwest. Most people doubted that he would find the trail to Santa Fe including his arrival back to Arrow Rock. He came back four months later with a map of the trail. Mapping the trail would have not been successful without the guidance of migrating buffalo. These buffaloes led him to water sources; a constant guarantee of survival in the desert. Although this trail was easy to follow, it was between the United States and French territories. The area was called ‘neutral zone’ and was unprotected since no one claimed it. Hence, travelers on the trail encountered many robberies. By 1880 a railroad, now referred as the Santa Fe Railroad, was built on the trail which increased trade between Missouri and the Western United States.
Read more about this topic: Medicine Trails
Famous quotes containing the words santa and/or trail:
“I stopped believing in Santa Claus when I was six. Mother took me to see him in a department store and he asked for my autograph.”
—Shirley Temple Black (b. 1928)
“And Change with hurried hand has swept these scenes:
The woods have fallen, across the meadow-lot
The hunter’s trail and trap-path is forgot,
And fire has drunk the swamps of evergreens;
Yet for a moment let my fancy plant
These autumn hills again: the wild dove’s haunt,
The wild deer’s walk: in golden umbrage shut,”
—Frederick Goddard Tuckerman (1821–1873)