The Fort Smith-Santa Fe Trail Marcy Route, 1849
Amarillo, Potter County, Texas
Marker Inscription
Clearly visible to the northeast and southwest are ruts of the Old Fort Smith-Santa Fe Trail, the overland route connecting river ports of Fort Smith and Van Buren, Arkansas with Santa Fe, New Mexico. Route gained national fame when Col. R.B. Marcy, U.S. Army, escorted party of 500 Arkansans--professional and business men and families--over this road in June 1849, on the way to California's gold fields. Scores of goldseekers in smaller groups also used the route that year. Old trail became proposed route in 1853 for first transcontinental railroad as surveyed by Lt. A.W. Whipple. Prior to the Civil War, this route had won Congressional support, but the War shifted sentiment so that Union Pacific, to the northward, actually was built first. During the War, a mail line left the Old Butterfield Stage Route in Eastern Oklahoma and went by way of this point over to Las Vegas and Santa Fe. In 1878 began usage of this link of road for a mail-stage line from the federal fort at Mobeetie, in the Texas Panhandle, to Las Vegas, New Mexico. The trail has not been used since 1888. (1965)
Erected by Texas Historical Commission
The Story
Faint ruts still visible on the Panhandle horizon mark the Fort Smith–Santa Fe Trail, the overland road linking the Arkansas River ports to New Mexico. The route won national fame in June 1849 when Captain R. B. Marcy escorted a party of some 500 Arkansans across it toward the California gold fields, and it was later surveyed as a possible transcontinental railroad line before the Civil War redirected the rails northward. Used until 1888 for gold-seekers, mail, and stagecoaches, the trail is a rare landscape record of westward migration.
Why it matters
The trail traces the great mid-century rush westward, when a road across the plains could carry a nation's ambitions from the Mississippi to the Pacific.
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Related people
- · R. B. Marcy
- · A. W. Whipple
Related events
- · California Gold Rush
Themes & tags
Nearby & related markers
The Canadian River
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For more than 12,000 years the Canadian River drew people to its banks, from ancient travelers to the stone-and-adobe village builders of the 1100s–1300s. It became one of the first interior rivers Europeans knew: Coronado forded it in 1541 chasing the golden rumor of Quivira, and Oñate followed in 1601. Later it guided French traders, Santa Fe merchants like Josiah Gregg, and California-bound emigrants escorted west by Captain Marcy in 1849.
Fort Smith-Santa Fe Trail Gregg Route, 1840
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Faint traces of an old overland road still cross the land southwest of this marker—the route that linked the Arkansas river ports of Fort Smith and Van Buren with Santa Fe, a trade center since 1609. It was pioneered by Santa Fe trader Josiah Gregg, who first passed this spot in March 1840. A decade later, gold seekers bound for California poured along the same road, which in the days before barbed wire carried soldiers, hunters, and traders across the open plains.
The United States Topographical Engineers in the High Plains of Texas
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Between 1838 and 1863 the small U.S. Army Topographical Corps—never more than 36 officers—mapped vast stretches of the American West, often through country held by peoples resisting their advance. Armed with barometer, compass, sextant, and pencil, they recorded climate, terrain, soils, and possible wagon and railroad routes. Three parties surveyed the future Potter County: Lt. James W. Abert along the Canadian River in 1845, Lt. James H. Simpson on a Fort Smith-to-Santa Fe rail route in 1849, and Lt. Amiel W. Whipple mapping a Mississippi-to-Pacific line in 1853.
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