Living Our Dream: Cimarron, Santa Fe Trail, Another Kit Carson Home

Yesterday we drove back out of Cimarron Canyon that we drove through on Friday and dropped down to the small town of Cimarron. This town was a major stopping place for the travelers on the Santa Fe Trail, but still on the Mountain Route. They needed to travel about another 35 miles until the southern route, Cimarron Route, which we passed over on the way here on Friday, joins up with the Mountain Route and then continues on about another 100 miles into Santa Fe.

Orientation to where we are

We had picked up a brochure about the town and it's sights to see, one of them the famous St. James Hotel. This hotel was started by President Lincoln's former chef, Henri Lambert, in 1864. Lambert wanted to go out west once he heard about the gold rush in California. However, he became dishearten when he could not find gold and settled in the small town of Cimarron where he started the hotel. Supposedly lots of ghosts roam the hotel, have had professional ghost seekers come and verify that indeed spirits reside within the walls. The hotel served the travelers on the Trail as well as becoming quite a gathering place for many notable people, many good (Earp, Bat Masterson, Wild Bill Hickok and Calamity Jane), some bad such as Jesse James, gunslinger Clay Allison, Black Jack Ketchum. Many people died in the hotel from shootouts. The hotel's bar/saloon still has bullet holes in the ceiling.

St. James Hotel

I was impressed with this gas converted chandelier

Lobby

Some of the famous people who came to hotel

History of hotel

Walked around the town, saw the plaza and well that the emigrants on the trail stopped overnight to water their livestock and rest before continuing on towards Santa Fe. Learned about Lucien Maxwell who purchased the largest land tract in the United States. Since he was a non-native of Spain (the territory was Spanish at the time) the Spanish natives began a revolt which started the Spanish-American War that eventually ended with the US acquiring all the land.

Then we got a real awakening when we traveled the original route of the trail and saw ruts from the wagon trains. Very visible. All this time we were riding along the rim of the Cimarron Mountains which is the eastern ridge of the Rockies, keeping the mountains to our right. Must have been a hard journey - up and down into swales, long periods without seeing creeks or rivers.

Trail ruts

705 miles to Missouri, 137 to Santa Fe

Very well worn ruts

Passed through the area of the Boy Scouts Philmont Ranch which is ENORMOUS, part of the original tract of Maxwell Land Grant. This is the national training center for the Boy Scouts. Just south of the Ranch is a ghost town of Rayado which was one of the homes of Kit Carson. We were not going to stop, but thought - maybe we will learn something new about him, which we did. Carson, at that time was living in Taos, was convinced by Maxwell to come to Rayado to help establish the area and lend protection to the citizens that were settling there. Carson, his wife and children lived in this Rayado home off and on from 1849 to 1858. Not the original home but reconstructed to the best of their knowledge. Run by the Boy Scouts and the two young men who were there to explain what we were seeing were a wealth of knowledge. Looked like men out of the 1850s.