Hitting the Santa Fe Trail

Just as we serendipitously found ourselves on Route 66 in the spring, we magically (unintentionally?) found ourselves following the old Santa Fe Trail this fall - all the way from Kansas City to Santa Fe.

We learned that between 1821 and 1880, the Santa Fe Trail was an important commercial highway connecting Missouri and Santa Fe, New Mexico. It was primarily important because ranchers could herd their cows from the southern ranches to much higher paying customers further north by following the trail, which got easier and less dangerous as towns grew along it. Dodge City in particular became the trade center of the Santa Fe Trail and was the quintessential Wild West Cowtown, attracting lawmen like Bat Masterson and Wyatt Earp to keep the “peace.”

Seen in Kansas City, MO (Kansas State was across the street, seriously).

Sign in Las Vegas, NM.

Just pretty, also on the trail.

Some details on our trail adventures below, but you can see more about how much we loved Santa Fe (and New Mexico in general) in this post.

Dodge City:

This was part of the living room decoration at our Airbnb - 🤷🏻‍♀️.

The main attraction in Dodge City was the Boot Hill Museum. It was fun, but I have to be honest, I would not detour just to see the museum. Here are some highlights:

Boothill Graveyard at the museum!

Some refurbished signs….they are not sure who many of the people buried there were.

Site of the jail….

Lots of info on the Native American population. They had sticks for a game like lacrosse!

Also, lots of info on life on the trail - this one cracked me up.

More patent wars! This time around barbed wire. I didn’t know people patented them!

They still have annual Cowboy Hall of Fame competitions!

Last year’s winners. 2025 winners were inducted the weekend we were there.

There was also a set of bronze statues you could find in the area - Wyatt Earp, etc., etc. My favorite of course was the one of Doc Holiday (What’s the quote - “Only Val Kilmer could make dying of consumption look so good” or something like that. And before you go all - that was the Tobmstone movie, I double checked and confirmed that Doc helped Wyatt in Dodge also!). Anyway, the Doc Holiday statue was of him sitting at a poker table with a seat empty and just waiting for you. I tried so hard to get a good photo out of it, but they all turned out horrible. Anyhoo, here’s the least worst…

Clayton:

Clayton is a small town along the trail, basically just a train stop, a couple of hotels and a handful of restaurants. We chose to stop there for the night simply because it was located at a good stopping point between Dodge City and Santa Fe. The bad news was, the train was VERY LOUD and VERY CLOSE. The good news was, we read about a very highly rated “hole in the wall” Mexican place - it was definitely not the prettiest place to eat, but the food was fantastic. Note that this will be a theme throughout our experiences in New Mexico.

There was one stop in Clayton that was definitely worth the detour - Clayton Lake Dinosaur Tracks! The Dinosaur Trackway site consists of more than 500 individual tracks from at least four types of dinosaurs along what used to be the sandy shores of an ancient seaway more than 100 million years ago. That’s right - there was a seaway in the middle of the US with its western beach in New Mexico!

Check this out - the tracks were exposed because of construction of the dam at Clayton Lake (which started in 1955), but it wasn't until the lake overflowed into the spillway in 1982 that the last few inches of cover were washed away and the tracks were revealed.

Showing where the inland seaway was!

A broader view of the field of tracks. We were able to walk around it on a boardwalk.

Tracks - look but do not touch!

So crazy to think how long ago the dinosaurs walked here.

This was the biggest track - see description in next photo.

On the way in to Santa Fe, we also passed through Las Vegas (New Mexico) and Pecos, also part of the trail. Las Vegas was cute and also a college town, but Pecos was not the best town to explore. On the other hand, we found the best restaurant to stop for lunch (lol).