Cimarron National Grassland: The Dry Cutoff and the Road the Buffalo Road Became

Morton County, Kansas, the far southwestern corner of the state, holds more Santa Fe Trail ruts than any other county in the United States. The Cimarron National Grassland protects a twenty-three-mile stretch of the Cimarron Cutoff route, the most dangerous section of the most important commercial highway in the pre-railroad American West.

The Santa Fe Trail opened in eighteen twenty-one when William Becknell led a trading party from Missouri to Santa Fe and came back with Mexican silver coins that made his investors very interested in the arrangement. By the eighteen thirties, the trail was carrying caravans of canvas-topped wagons loaded with manufactured goods from Missouri to exchange for furs, silver, and livestock in New Mexico. The round trip took several months and crossed six hundred miles of territory that was, in the eighteen thirties, neither United States territory nor welcoming.

The Cimarron Cutoff was the shortcut. The main mountain route went northwest through Raton Pass, adding days and altitude. The Cutoff went southwest across the Cimarron Desert, a waterless stretch of roughly sixty miles between the Arkansas River and the Cimarron River. The distance saved was worth the risk. The risk was considerable: parties that ran out of water on the Cimarron Desert died. The Comanche and Kiowa raided the trail throughout its commercial life. The buffalo herds that the trail crossed were the same herds the Comanche and Kiowa depended on, and every wagon train through the grassland was a reminder that the southern plains were not empty territory.

Bent's Old Fort, the great trading post on the Arkansas River in Colorado, anchored the eastern end of the mountain route. The ruins are accessible today near La Junta, Colorado. This grassland is where the cutoff begins, at the point where traders made the choice between the safe road and the fast one.