The Santa Fe Trail

The Santa Fe Trail. Santa Fe Trail National Scenic Byway. , Point of Rocks was a convenient camping spot for Santa Fe Trail travelers going in both directions. When the caravans camped here going west they knew they were two weeks from the end of their 900-mile journey. Here they would have their first view of the Rocky Mountains to the west and Wagon Mound, a notable landmark, was now in sight. They could rest at Point of Rocks where the water was always flowing and the pasture was good for the animals., Popular Camping Ground , At the beginning of the Mexican-American War in 1846, General Stephen Watts Kearny traveled over Raton Pass to Las Vegas where he claimed New Mexico for the United States. But many of the volunteer units that followed him took the flatter Cimarron Route and passed by Point of Rocks., A doctor traveling with one group wrote of seeing a "clear mountain stream" coming out of the rock which consisted of "a mass of large blocks of sienite, towering to the height of several hundred feet.", The arrival of the railroad in Las Vegas, in 1879, ended the need for the Santa Fe Trail., "Point of Rocks was ‘…a diminutive spur projecting from the north… at the foot of which springs a charming little fount of water.’” , , Josiah Gregg, trail trader and author of The Commerce of the Prairies, a descriptive chronicle of life on the trail, 1844, Sites Nearby , Springer Museum , Informational exhibits explain the importance of the Santa Fe Trail to the region., Hertzstein Museum, Clayton , This museum, housed in a former church, offers informative exhibits about the Santa Fe Trail as well as history of the local area., St. James Hotel, Cimarron , Built at the end of the trail era, the St. James opened in 1872. Buffalo Bill Cody, Jesse James, and Black Jack Ketchum stayed here. The hotel is still in business.