DUANE
Duane's take
Here's how the official marker tells it, and I'll do my best to do it justice. Now, every great road has to start somewhere, and this one started with a trader named Josiah Gregg, out in 1840, lookin for a path to Santa Fe along the south side of the Canadian River. He found one.
Blazed it himself. And what he left behind would eventually carry half a continent's worth of dreamers across the Texas plains. Nearly a decade later, in 1849, the United States Army decided they'd like a closer look at that route.
They sent Captain Randolph B. Marcy — born 1812, died 1857 — to lead a military escort out of Fort Smith, Arkansas. Marcy wasn't traveling light, either.
He had about five hundred pioneers at his back, all of them California-bound, all of them counting on this trail to get them there. The party crossed into Oldham County on June the thirteenth. One day later — June the fourteenth — they made their ascent to the Llano Estacado, right near this very site.
And when Marcy reached the top and looked out at what lay before him, he reached for language big enough to hold it. He called it, and these are his words, "as boundless and trackless as the ocean... a desolate waste of uninhabited solitude." The man was not given to understatement. But here's the twist that makes this trail something special.
Those same endless plains that hit Marcy like a wall of silence — they turned out to be just about the smoothest road-building surface a wagon wheel ever rolled across. After clearing the plains, Marcy came back around and said he had never passed a country where wagons could move along with as much ease and facility, without expenditure of any labor in making a road, as upon this route. Eighty-five days after leaving Fort Smith, his party walked into Santa Fe.
Not bad for five hundred people and the wide open unknown. Marcy didn't keep that observation to himself. He advocated the trail as a prospective route for a transcontinental railroad — and after the Civil War, that railroad got built.
Then came the automobile age, and when the interstate highway system was developed, U.S. Highway 66 and Interstate 40were laid close to that same trail. Josiah Gregg struck out across the south side of the Canadian River in 1840 looking for a way through.
What he found, it turns out, was a groove in the land so natural, so insistent, that every generation since has just kept following it. Some roads, once made, don't let go.
What the marker says
What came to be known as the Fort Smith - Santa Fe Trail was first blazed in 1840 by Josiah Gregg, a trader seeking a route to Santa Fe along the south side of the Canadian River. In 1849, Gregg's route was closely followed by a military escort led by Capt. Randolph B. Marcy (1812-1857). Marcy's group traveled from Fort Smith, Arkansas to Santa Fe with about 500 pioneers heading for California. The party entered Oldham County on June 13th, and on June 14th ascended to the Llano Estacado near this site. Reaching the top, Marcy found the plains "as boundless...and trackless as the ocean...a desolate waste of uninhabited solitude." Eighty-five days after leaving Fort Smith, the party reached Santa Fe. After passing the plains, Marcy remarked, "I have never passed a country where wagons could move along with as much ease and facility, without expenditure of any labor in making a road, as upon this route." Marcy advocated the trail as a prospective route for a transcontinental railroad, which was built after the Civil War. Later, as the country entered the automobile age and the interstate highway system was developed, U.S. Highway 66 (Route 66) and Interstate 40 were laid close to the trail. (1992)