Samalayuca Dunes - The Samalayuca Dune Fields and The History of The Chihuahua Trail (El Camino Real de Tierra Adentro) - Experiences of Travelers in The 1800's Traversing The Dune Fields On The Chihuahua Trail

Experiences of Travelers in The 1800's Traversing The Dune Fields On The Chihuahua Trail

In order to avoid the delay of traveling around the dune fields on the detour, many travelers on the trail between Chihuahua and El Paso del Norte elected to go directly across the dune fields.

From the 1600s though the 1800s merchants, explores, soldiers and the random tourist traveling on the Chihuahua trail found passage through the Samalayuca dunes difficult and dangerous. Throughout this period of three centuries the Apache Indians carried on their off and on guerrilla war with the encroaching Spanish, operating out of the Sierra Madre mountains to the west. They sporadically attacked and sometimes laid waste to hacienda/ranches and small settlements in the area. As part of this conflict the Apaches kept watch over the trail across the dunes, as well as the water holes in and around the dunes fields, in order to rob and kill vulnerable groups of travelers.

Even as late as 1882 travelers were "warned to avoid this point of all others while traveling through Chihuahua", and to take the alternative route around the dunes area, though some 60 miles longer, because "This place is attended by great danger from the attacks of the Apaches, who well know the helpless condition of animals passing and take the opportunity to attack parties."

While animals and persons found footing and traction to be difficult in the loose sands of the dunes, what was most dreaded was the difficulty of hauling loaded wagons or carts through the sand. These vehicles could bog down to their hubs. Some merchants going south from El Paso started out with carts loaded with goods, but would hire a mule train to accompany them. On arrival at the dunes, the goods from the carts would be loaded on the mule train and the emptied carts would then be pulled over the dunes. On the south side of the dunes the carts would be reloaded and proceed.

In 1842 a George W. Kendall made a diary as he traveled through the dunes. He was one of a group of political prisoners, who were marched down the Chihuahua trail, guarded by units of the Mexican army. He observed high "mountains" of loose sand along the trail. He noted that horses would sink in sand to their fetlocks, and walking in the sand exhausted men and animals. The two-wheeled "carreteras" would bog down in the sand and to pull them through this area required doubling the teams. Kendall also noted a large stone, weighing some 200 pounds directly in the path through the dune fields. Over many years passing gangs of muleteers had superstitiously adopted the custom of lifting the stone and moving it farther along, each gang moving it a few feet at a time towards Mexico City. Their recurrent activity, continuing over many decades were reported to have moved the stone some 14 miles.

In 1846 an English soldier of fortune reported the track through the dunes littered with skeletons and dead bodies of oxen, mules and horses. He reported the sand to be knee deep, and constantly shifting. The dunes caused death to animals and humans. "On one ridge the upper half of a human skeleton protruded from the sand".

Traveling by night avoided the punishing desert heat during the summer months, and in 1846 a German scientist Friedrich Adolph Wislizenus described such a night passage through the dunes. Flashes of lightning illuminated ghostly images of slow moving wagons, riders on horseback wrapped in blankets, and travelers on foot walking or sleeping beside the track. Quiet prevailed except for the cries of muleteers and the thunder, The winding passage of the procession through the dunes was marked with multiple pinpoints of light from "cigarritos".

During the Mexican War, Colonel Alexander William Doniphan led a force of about 1000 American soldiers south from El Paso. They had engaged to guard a merchant caravan of about 315 heavy wagons going to Chihuahua City. They elected to go through the Salamayuca Sands, rather than take the detour. After entering the dune fields, the mules pulling the heavy wagon train sank to their knees in the sand, and the wheels of the wagons buried to the hubs. With the merchant's wagons bogged down, men and animals began to suffer serious debility from lack of water. The column had to abandon thousands of pounds of supplies in order to free the wagons from the sands, and men and animals had to join together to push and pull the wagons forward out of the dune area. Once past the dunes, Colonel Doniphan went on south, and still accompanied by the wagon train he defeated a Mexican force at the Battle of the Sacramento River, thereafter capturing Chihuahua City.