Aztec Ruins awarded funding for trail expansion

Next summer, those walking from downtown Aztec to Aztec Ruins National Monument can trace mule tracks that traversed the Old Spanish Trail about 200 years ago. Thanks to a nearly $100,000 grant from the National Park Service's Connecting Trails to Parks program, Aztec Ruins will offer more than just enhanced pedestrian access to the Great Kiva. The money will be spent to retrace the Old Spanish Trail, a route used by Spanish merchants in the early 1800s to transport goods by pack mule from New Mexico to California. Aztec Ruins Superintendent Larry Turk will work with the Old Spanish Trail Association and National Parks Service to find the route. Surviving diaries document Spanish merchants traveling with pack mules along the route to sell New Mexican goods like serapes, quilts and blankets. LeRoy Hafen's book "Old Spanish Trail" calls the merchant route "the longest, crookedest, most arduous pack mule trail in the history of America." According to Hafen, in 1829, a Spanish merchant named Antonio Armijo led a pack of 100 animals through present-day Aztec on the what is considered to be the first documented round trip between the Four Corners and San Bernardino, Calif...more