Josiah Gregg (1806-50) blazed the Fort Smith-Santa Fe Trail in 1840 as a shorter route between the U.S. and New Mexico. He crossed this site on March 17, 1840, while returning to Arkansas from a trading expedition to Santa Fe and Chihuahua. In Commerce of the Prairies, published in 1844, Gregg recommended the new route, which paralleled the Canadian River. Over 2,000 California-bound gold seekers traveled it in 1849. The largest wagon train of that year was accompanied by U.S. Army troops commanded by Captain Randolph B. Marcy (1812-87), who surveyed the trail for a proposed national wagon road, and Marcy's party crossed this site on June 9, 1849. Extensive use of the Fort Smith-Santa Fe Trail in the early 1850s led to its consideration as a favorable route for a transcontinental railroad, and Lt. A. W. Whipple of the Army Corps of Engineer surveyed a possible route in the summer of 1853. By the late 1850s, emigrants were traveling a more southern road through El Paso, which eventually became the southern railroad route, and the Fort Smith-Santa Fe Trail fell into disuse and was finally abandoned, though in many places on the Plains the wagon ruts are still visible in the undisturbed prairie sod.
