The Chihuahua Trail

The Chihuahua Trail – a millennia-old corridor for human passage across the northern Chihuahuan Desert to the Southern Rocky Mountains – ranks among the most historic highways in North America. It has served as an avenue for commerce, conquest, warfare, migration, adventure, flight and ideological change.

Some 550 miles long, the trail connects Chihuahua, the capital of Mexico’s state of Chihuahua, with Santa Fe, the capital of the U. S. state of New Mexico. It devolved, during the 18th and 19th centuries, from the northern segment of the main artery of the old 1500-mile-long Camino Real de Tierra Adentro (the Royal Road of the Interior Land), a Spanish roadway which began at Mexico City and ended in northern New Mexico.


Historically, the south end of the Chihuahua Trail segment began near Chihuahua’s central plaza, at the front of the city’s large baroque-style cathedral. According to Max L. Moorhead in his New Mexico’s Royal Road: Trade and Travel on the Chihuahua Trail, it led northward for some 50 miles through an open desert valley, between a range of hills on the east and the Sierra de Nido (Shelter Mountains) on the west. It crossed the small, but historic, Sacramento River about 20 miles north of Chihuahua. It passed the Laguna Encinillas (Live Oak Lake), a shallow playa lake fed by springs and intermittent streams, at the northern end of the valley. It continued northward for more than 100 miles through basin and range country, reaching the 770-square-mile Samalayuca sand dune field just north of Laguna Patos (Duck Lake). Here, the trail split. One branch proceeded due north for some 60 miles, through the towering dunes then across desert brushlands, to a ford of the Rio Grande and the famous pass between the Juarez and Franklin mountain ranges—now the site of the border cities Juarez and El Paso. The other branch veered northeast for roughly 45 miles, across the dune field’s southeastern margin, to the south bank of the river. It followed the Rio Grande upstream some 35 miles to Juarez and El Paso and the ford—often called simply, "The Pass." Today, the original trail (except for the branch which skirted the Samalayuca sand dunes) from Chihuahua to The Pass lies beneath or beside Mexico’s Federal Highway 45.


After crossing The Pass, which became a focal point for settlement, commerce, transportation and the military post Fort Bliss, the trail bore northward, up the Rio Grande valley for some 55 miles. It passed the Franklin and Organ mountain ranges to the east. Just north of the small range called the Robledo Mountains, on the west side of the valley, the trail veered away from the river, which followed a westward-bending arc through a heavily dissected landscape before it resumed its north/south course. The trail itself "strung the bow," intercepting both ends of the river’s arc. The 90-mile segment, which lay east of the Caballo and Fra Cristobal ranges and lacked any dependable sources of water, became known as the "Jornada del Muerto," the "march of the dead," or "dead man’s journey." It became the most notorious and fearful passage in the entire Chihuahua Trail. Rejoining the river, the trail followed the valley northward for 150 miles, through the region of the historic pueblos which greeted Spanish conquistadors in the 16th century. It passed at the foot of that brooding, lava-capped mesa called "Contadero." It skirted the western edge of a sprawling and biologically rich marshland called the "Bosque del Apache." Hewing to the Rio Grande, it passed Albuquerque and the western flanks of Manzano and Sandia mountain ranges, then it began the ascent from the desert or, the Rio Abajo, or the Lower River, to the Southern Rocky Mountain foothills, and the Rio Arriba, or the Upper River. At the San Domingo Pueblo, the trail veered away from the Rio Grande again, following its Canada de Santa Fe tributary for roughly 30 miles into the community of Santa Fe and the main plaza, the north end of the trail, which stood surrounded by single story adobe buildings. Today, with the exception of the Jornada del Muerto passage, the corridor parallels Interstate Highway 10 from El Paso to Las Cruces and IH 25 from Las Cruces to Santa Fe.

The Chihuahua Trail’s near coincidence with modern highways, both in Mexico and the United States, speaks to the route’s natural and historic place as a roadway for human travel.