The Old Spanish Trail was a historic pack trail from Santa Fe to the pueblo of Los Angeles, used by Mexican traders who carried woolen goods from New Mexico to exchange for prized California mules and horses, and by emigrants to California. It began as a trade route between New Mexico and Utah during the Spanish Colonial period and later extended west to California during the Mexican period. Abiquiu, settled in the 1700s on the far northern frontier of Spanish America, was a remote village whose settlers were predominantly genizaros, people taken from their Indian families through trade, enslavement, or capture and absorbed into Hispanic culture. Their knowledge of languages and the land suited them to frontier life, exploration, and trade. Although generations of Spanish explorers, priests, soldiers, and traders had failed to establish a trade and communication route between California and New Mexico, Antonio Armijo, after Mexican Independence from Spain, first traveled the whole length of the trail from New Mexico to California. In 1829, as trade between the United States and Mexico and within Mexico expanded rapidly, he led a caravan of 60 men, horses, and pack mules loaded with wool blankets from surrounding communities to California and returned the following April with 100 additional horses and mules, establishing the Old Spanish Trail.