By Mark Henderson and Rachel Preston Prinz
The Emigrant Pass route segment
constitutes a verifiable landscape through which a mule and horse pack trail
(later known as the “Spanish Trail”) passed and can be historically linked with
the trade in commercial products between the Mexican Territories of Alta, California
and Nuevo Mexico in the period of 1829-1848.
This conclusion is based on evidence of the trail passing over this area
as described in the journals and maps created by John C Frémont in
1844 as well as the published journal of George Douglas Brewerton, who passed
through the area with Kit Carson in 1847.
Documents made by emigrant wagon train travelers on the “Spanish Trail”
in 1849 immediately after the trade in woolen fabrics woven in New Mexico and
packed by mule to California and traded for draught animals for the eastern
territories ceased, confirm “Emigrant Pass” as the known transportation
corridor during the last decade of Mexican jurisdiction of the trade and
territory and beyond. The Emigrant Pass
route segment is a historic site eligible at the State Level for listing to the
National Register under Criteria A for its association with the Old Spanish
Trail and events between 1829 – 1848 that have made an important contribution
to the history of the region between New Mexico
and California.
Also
eligible under criterion D the site has the potential to yield information
important to understanding the commerce/trade network that developed from
1829-1848 between New Mexico and California. This site is nominated under the
Multiple Property Documentation Form, Old Spanish Trail AD 1821-1848, and is representative of
(include historic contexts from MPDF) and areas of significance: commerce,
economics, exploration/settlement, social history, and transportation.
The Emigrant Pass route segment of the Old Spanish Trail is
representative of the following historic contexts as defined in the Multiple
Property Documentation Form Old Spanish Trail AD 1821-1848. This historic site
is eligible for listing under Criterion A as a property associated with events
that have made a significant contribution to the broad patterns of history
during the Mexican and Territorial Periods of under these areas of
significance: commerce, economics, exploration/settlement, social history, and
transportation.
The significance of the Emigrant Pass route segment is
inseperable from John C. Frémont’s “Second Expedition” to the west intended to
scout routes to the Pacific to expand the US dominion westward. Frémont
in this expedition named the established route he followed “the Spanish
Trail.” Prior to Frémont it was probably just known as the “camino al
California” to the Nuevo Mexicanos and the“camino al Nuevo Mexico” to the “Californios.”
Were it not for the incursions of “Americano”, or
more-accurately, ex-patriot American and French-Canadian traders and
trappers on the New Mexican frontier,
and encouragement and incentives offered by the newly independent nation of
Mexico, a commercial pack trail route would not have been established departing
from Abiquiu on the New Mexico frontier, fording the Colorado River (near
present Green River, Utah) and passing through territory with Ute and Paiute
marauders on the Colorado Plateau, southern Great Basin and Mojave Desert. Frémont
’s account and maps published in 1848 document not only the route of the
trail between Cajon Pass and Great Salt Lake in detail, but also give specifics
of the established trail condition and use by the Mexicano and Americano
entrepeneurs.
Equally important to this expedition is a report by Frémont
describing events of travel and interaction between travelers and the Indians.
Frémont reports an incident at “Archilette” Spring, which he renamed
“Hendandez” Spring and is known today as Resting Springs – an oasis of trees
located in the west viewshed from the Emigrant Pass summit which forms the
western end of the Stump Spring to Resting Spring Old Spanish Trail route
segment or “jornada.” Frémont describes
the killing of four of six travelers on the “Spanish Trail” at Archilette
Springs, who were apparently getting a head start with about thirty head of
horses back to New Mexico. Among those
killed by Indians, presumed to be Paiutes, were the wife of Andreas Fuentes
(who survived the attack) and Santiago Giacombe. Also killed were the mother
and father of an eleven year old boy named Pablo Hernandez, who escaped with
Andreas Fuentes. The two escapees,
Andreas Fuentes and Pablo Hernandez stumbled into Frémont’s camp on the Mojave
River several days after the attack. Kit Carson, Alexis Godey and Andreas
Fuentes determined to recapture the lost horses and set off. Godey and Carson
returned to the Frémont caravan two days later, in the vicinity of the Amargosa
River, with the scalps of two Indians from the encampment that Carson and Godey
had attacked. Frémont a day later
describes the scene of the killed Mexicans at Resting Spring. This incident of the exploits of Kit Carson,
recorded by Frémont is often repeated (i.e. Brewerton 1993) as part of the
Spanish Trail history. The boy, Pablo Hernandez, completed the expedition as
Frémont’s charge, though there is uncertainty about what ultimately happened to
him (Spence and Jackson 1970:724, 725n).
There are no purposely constructed trail structures know
from historical accounts that can be associated with the Mexican period
commercial use (1829-1848) of this or any portion of the “Old Spanish Trail,”
except perhaps some enhanced steps carved into the Arizona and Utah slickrock
Canyon Country on the Armijo route. However, the Emigrant Pass Route Segment
does inform about aspects of transportation related to packtrail and livestock
driveway functions of the Mexican period commercial use of the Old Spanish
Trail network that left so little imprint on the landscape that alignments
surviving from the Mexican period are only discernable because of subsequent
packtrail, livestock driveway (including cattle, sheep and goats) and
particularly freight and emigrant wagon use of the treadway. These surviving alignments, though altered by
subsequent use of the landscape, reflect distinctive considerations of the
expedition “captain,” “guides” (Marcy 1859), packers (arrieros) and
drovers. Though there are few period
accounts of the “Old Spanish Trail,” these and later account indicate that
daily travel objectives and routes were a result of coordination between
journeymen specialists and their apprentices, depending on previous experience,
expert guides, and daily and seasonal weather and encounters with indigenous
societies. Adjustments of the trail
alignment could be radical - based on changing conditions, seasonal variation,
and experience of the specialists in the caravan. The resulting braided and eroded routes in
the corridor reflect these decisions much like a constructed transportation
structure (with embankments, ditches, bridges and retaining walls), related to
inferences in how the travelers “read the landscape.” The major features resulting from these
decisions in the Emigrant Pass segment are the “pinch point” nature of the
alignments in the rocky hard surfaces of Emigrant Pass. Unlike the braided nature of the corridor and
alignments in broad valleys with lose erodible soils where pack trails would
quickly cause down-cutting and trace formation, the rocky soils and calcium
carbonate-hardenedsurfaces at Emigrant Pass do not appear to have allowed
physical traces of trail structures which have not been altered and obliterated
by subsequent use.
D- Property has yielded, or is likely to yield, information
important in prehistory or history.
The Emigrant Pass route segment, because of the relatively
unaltered nature of the landscape presents opportunities to yield archeological
evidence of packtrail and livestock driveway activities in the two decades of
1829-1848. To date, intact,
substantially unaltered archeological features, structures and objects dating
to the 1829-1848 period of significance have not been substantiated on the
Emigrant Pass route segment, or elsewhere on the designated Old Spanish
National Historic Trail. Therefore significance based on intact buildings,
structures and objects that can be directly tied to the period 1829-1848 cannot
be verified on the Emigrant Pass segment or elsewhere on the Old Spanish
National Historic Trail. Locating and
identifying archeological evidence of an unaltered pack trail from 1848 or
earlier with current available theory and technology is unlikely. Archeological
techniques such as soil chemistry, metal detection, ground penetrating radar,
as well as traditional archeological techniques such as fine grained mapping
and excavations will not be feasible unless alignments are protected from
further erosion and foot and vehicular traffic is channeled and monitored to
preserve the landscape and site resources.
However, opportunities to yield information important in the
history of the Old Spanish Trail trading network do exist at Emigrant Pass for
fine grained botanical and topographical mapping to detect use patterns of
travelways over the Pass. Further
archeological survey and documentary historical research may be able to resolve
the pack trail alignment following the rocky slope in a north northeasterly
direction or the visible wagon road alignment that heads almost due east until
it reaches a broad wash bottom headed north easterly.