The Santa Fe Trail #4

NPS map of the Santa Fe Trail in 1871 (click to zoom; more maps here)

The American Solar Challenge is on again in 2021, and includes a road race along the Santa Fe Trail on 4–7 August, from Independence, MO to Santa Fe, NM (exact route still to be decided).

To get myself in the mood, I’ve been reading Land of Enchantment, the memoirs of Marion Sloan Russell, who travelled the Santa Fe Trail multiple times. After marrying, she was an “army wife” for some time, before setting up a trading post beside the Trail. In 1871, she moved to a ranch in the mountains west of Trinidad, CO, where her husband was murdered during the Colfax County War. Towards the end of her life she visited many important sites along the Trail. They were already falling into ruin:

“At Fort Union I found crumbling walls and tottering chimneys. Here and there a tottering adobe wall where once a mighty howitzer had stood. Great rooms stood roofless, their whitewashed walls open to the sky. Wild gourd vines grew inside the officers’ quarters. Rabbits scurried before my questing feet. The little guard house alone stood intact, mute witness of the punishment inflicted there. The Stars and Stripes was gone. Among a heap of rubble I found the ruins of the little chapel where I had stood—a demure, little bride in a velvet cape—and heard a preacher say, ‘That which God hath joined together let no man put asunder.’”

Marion Sloan Russell died in 1936 (aged 92) after being struck by a car in Trinidad, CO. She is buried in Stonewall Cemetery.

Fort Union in 2006 (credit: Scott; click to zoom)

Other posts in this series: Santa Fe Trail #1, Santa Fe Trail #2, Santa Fe Trail #3, Santa Fe Trail #4.

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The Santa Fe Trail #3

NPS map of the Santa Fe Trail in late 1866 (click to zoom; more maps here)

The American Solar Challenge is on again in 2021, and includes a road race along the Santa Fe Trail on 4–7 August, from Independence, MO to Santa Fe, NM (exact route still to be decided).

To get myself in the mood, I’ve been reading Land of Enchantment, the memoirs of Marion Sloan Russell, who travelled the Santa Fe Trail multiple times. After marrying, she was an “army wife” for some time, before setting up a trading post beside the (somewhat shorter in 1866) Santa Fe Trail at Tecolote, NM (about 15 km south of Las Vegas, NM):

“We had five living rooms behind the store. They were cool and pleasant. The thick stone walls resisted both heat and cold. The windows were long and narrow running from ceiling to floor. I draped them with a gay silken print. The floor I had covered with Navajo rugs … Often I have heard old-timers laughing about the heat and the dust of the desert. I have heard them say jokingly that Hell would seem cool after living in Santa Fé. I had heard them say that the burning sands of the desert had sucked old-timers so dry that they could not pray. I had laughed with them …”

Hopefully solar cars in the American Solar Challenge do not find the temperatures quite so hellish. The chart below shows average maximum July temperatures (early August temperatures are on average only about 0.5°C cooler, and may indeed be warmer, which means that temperatures inside the vehicles will be very hot):

Click to zoom; map produced using climate data from worldclim.org

Other posts in this series: Santa Fe Trail #1, Santa Fe Trail #2, Santa Fe Trail #3, Santa Fe Trail #4.

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The Santa Fe Trail #2

NPS map of the Santa Fe Trail “Mountain Route” (click to zoom; more maps here)

The American Solar Challenge is on again in 2021, and includes a road race along the Santa Fe Trail on 4–7 August, from Independence, MO to Santa Fe, NM (exact route still to be decided).

To get myself in the mood, I’ve been reading Land of Enchantment, the memoirs of Marion Sloan Russell, who travelled the Santa Fe Trail multiple times. Her third trip was in 1860, at the age of 15, travelling from Fort Leavenworth along the “Mountain Route” or “Upper Crossing.” This route avoided Indian raids along the Cimarron Cut-Off. The Mountain Route crosses the 7,840 ft (2,390 m) Raton Pass:

“Breaking camp while it was still early, our cavalcade began the steep and tortuous ascent of the Raton Pass. Today we glide easily over hairpin curves that in 1860 meant broken axles and crippled horses. The trail was a faint wheel mark winding in and out over fallen trees and huge boulders.”

If the American Solar Challenge follows the Mountain Route, solar cars will hopefully have an easier time on the modern road. The “big climb” at the 2018 American Solar Challenge (following the Oregon Trail) was 902 m in 35 km (2.6%). Starting from Trinidad, CO, the Raton Pass has a similar climb of 558 m in 22 km (2.5%), with a maximum grade of 6% on the steepest sections.

Raton Pass in October 2009 (credit: Chris Light; click to zoom)

Other posts in this series: Santa Fe Trail #1, Santa Fe Trail #2, Santa Fe Trail #3, Santa Fe Trail #4.

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The Santa Fe Trail #1

Map of the Santa Fe Trail (credit: NPS; click to zoom)

The American Solar Challenge is on again in 2021, and includes a road race along the Santa Fe Trail on 4–7 August, from Independence, MO to Santa Fe, NM (exact route still to be decided).

To get myself in the mood, I’m reading a second-hand copy of Land of Enchantment, the memoirs of Marion Sloan Russell, who first travelled the Santa Fe Trail in 1852 as a young girl of seven (following the southern route, the “Cimarron Cut-Off”) under the leadership of François Xavier Aubry:

“Each night there were two great circles of wagons. Captain Aubry’s train encamped a half mile beyond the government’s. Inside those great circles the mules were turned after grazing, or ropes were stretched between the wagons and thus a circular corral made. Inside the corral were the cooking fires, one for each wagon. After the evening meal we would gather around the little fires. The men would tell stories of the strange new land before us, tales of gold and of Indians. The women would sit with their long skirts drawn up over a sleeping child on their laps. Overhead brooded the night sky, the little camp fires flickered, and behind us loomed the dark hulks of the covered wagons. … It was strange about the prairies at dawn, they were all sepia and silver; at noon they were like molten metal, and in the evening they flared into unbelievable beauty—long streamers of red and gold were flung out across them. The sky had an unearthly radiance. Sunset on the prairie! It was haunting, unearthly and lovely.”

Not everything was quite so lovely; a theft in Santa Fe forced Marion’s widowed mother to abandon a further trip to California. Instead, she ran a boarding house: first in nearby Albuquerque, and later in Santa Fe itself. Let’s hope things go more smoothly for the solar cars of 2021.

Other posts in this series: Santa Fe Trail #1, Santa Fe Trail #2, Santa Fe Trail #3, Santa Fe Trail #4.

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