Wagon Mound on the Santa Fe Trail
New Mexico
Look to the butte that gives this place its name. For travelers on the Santa Fe Trail it was the last great landmark of the journey, a dark mesa shaped, from a distance, exactly like the canvas top of a covered wagon. The trail ran from eighteen twenty-one until the railroad reached Santa Fe in eighteen eighty, a lifeline of trade and migration between Missouri and Santa Fe.
By the time wagons reached this point, two famous branches of the route were rejoining. Travelers on the dry Cimarron Cutoff could swing here toward the protection of Fort Union, on the Mountain Branch, before the two branches came together to the south at Watrous. Weary and dust-caked, drivers could see this mound for miles, and knew the worst of the crossing was behind them.
The wagons are long gone, but the mound still stands watch over the plain.
