Shaver's Well

San Diego County, CA

Here the great southern overland trail crossed far older Indigenous trade routes traveled by the Kumeyaay (Kamia and Diegueño), Cahuilla, and Luiseño peoples. Warren F. Hall built and ran the San Felipe home station of the Butterfield Overland Mail, the audacious stagecoach line that in the late 1850s carried passengers and mail on a grueling weeks-long run between the Mississippi and California. A home station like this offered fresh teams, food, and rest in the harsh backcountry between San Diego and the desert.

San Diego County, CA

For four decades this palm-shaded spring was a vital watering stop on the arid trails of the Southern California desert. Between 1826 and 1866 it slaked the thirst of Mexican pioneers, mountain men, the U.S. Army of the West and the Mormon Battalion, Boundary and Railway surveyors, gold-rush Forty-Niners, and the Butterfield Overland Mail stages. In a landscape where water meant survival, a reliable spring like this shaped where routes ran and who could cross.

San Bernardino County, CA

This monument marks the Santa Fe and Salt Lake Trail as it ran through the Cajon Pass region in 1849, a corridor linking the Spanish-founded settlements of New Mexico with the Great Basin. Overland trails like this carried traders, migrants, and livestock across the arid Southwest at the dawn of the Gold Rush era.

Irvine, CA

On July 26, 1769, the Spanish Portolá Expedition—the first European overland exploration of Alta California—camped at the base of this hill beside springs that came to bear the name of Father Gómez, a Franciscan traveling with the party. The expedition was blazing the route that would soon knit together Spain's California missions and presidios.