Youth on the Santa Fe Trail

From journals, diaries, and third party accounts ten young people of the 19th century come to life. For many their adventures traveling the Santa Fe Trail are told in their own voice. For others relating their experience to a third party, their reminiscences take us to a time and place that we can acquire by no other means. Kit Carson became famous and is known to many of us. However, the details of his life create a picture of a unique man who personified the kind of person required to settle this vast continent from sea to sea, as men like Thomas Jefferson envisioned. A boy like Jose Librado Gurule who worked the trail west to east helps us to understand the struggle from the point of view of a common laborer who gained little from the adventure but who supported his family and community. Two ladies and other young men who were motivated by a variety of goals round out an exciting story from the annals of the building of a country from a vast, rich continent. The Santa Fe Trail was the road to carving a known area on the map that had long been a blank unknown.