Santa Fe Trail Books: A Collector's Authority Guide

The 900-mile commercial highway from Independence Missouri to Santa Fe New Mexico, 1821–1880 — the foundational literature from Josiah Gregg's Commerce of the Prairies to the contemporary Trail-scholarship canon.

By Josh Eldred · New Mexico Literacy Project · · ~7,800 words

On September 1, 1821, William Becknell left Arrow Rock Missouri with a party of traders bound for Santa Fe in the newly independent Republic of Mexico. He arrived November 16, having pioneered the route that would become the Santa Fe Trail — the 900-mile commercial highway that transformed the economy of the southwestern borderlands for the next fifty-nine years until the Atchison, Topeka and Santa Fe Railway reached Santa Fe in 1880 and made the Trail obsolete. In those six decades, the Santa Fe Trail carried an estimated nine-figure sum in goods, generated a substantial body of eyewitness narrative literature beginning with Josiah Gregg's Commerce of the Prairies (1844), played a pivotal role in the U.S.–Mexican War of 1846–1848, and shaped the Anglo-American understanding of New Mexico and the Southwest more profoundly than any other single economic institution of the nineteenth century. The collecting literature of the Santa Fe Trail is one of the deepest and most competitive niches in Western Americana — anchored by the extreme trophy of the Gregg 1844 first edition and supported by a rich canon of eyewitness narratives, military accounts, scholarly bibliographies, and contemporary regional histories. This is the collector's guide to that canon.

The Trail literature organizes into three broad publication periods. PERIOD ONE — eyewitness narratives published during and immediately after the Trail era (1844–1870): Josiah Gregg Commerce of the Prairies 1844; Lewis Garrard Wah-To-Yah and the Taos Trail 1850; Frank S. Edwards A Campaign in New Mexico with Colonel Doniphan 1847. These are the primary sources — first-person accounts by participants — and the most prized collector targets. PERIOD TWO — archival recovery and bibliography (1920–1975): Susan Shelby Magoffin Down the Santa Fe Trail and into Mexico 1926 (Yale); Jack Rittenhouse The Santa Fe Trail: A Historical Bibliography 1971 (UNM Press); Abraham Robinson Johnston et al. Marching with the Army of the West 1936 (Arthur H. Clark). PERIOD THREE — contemporary narrative history and scholarly canon (1984–2010): Marc Simmons Following the Santa Fe Trail 1984 (Ancient City Press); David Dary The Santa Fe Trail: Its History, Legends, and Lore 2000 (Knopf); Marian Meyer Mary Donoho: New First Lady of the Santa Fe Trail 1991 (Ancient City Press); William Brown The Santa Fe Trail 1988 (Patrice Press). A serious Trail library carries representative works from each period. An extraordinary Trail library begins with the Gregg 1844 first.

Last verified May 2026 · Original research by Josh Eldred

The Santa Fe Trail: Geography, Commerce, and the Two Routes

Santa Fe Trail Books are prized collectibles, with early accounts and historical studies commanding premium prices among Western Americana collectors. The Santa Fe Trail ran approximately 900 miles from the trailhead at Independence Missouri (the western edge of the United States and the principal outfitting point for western expeditions from the 1820s onward) to the Santa Fe Plaza in Santa Fe New Mexico — the commercial and governmental capital of the Province of New Mexico, later Territory of New Mexico. The Trail crossed the prairies of Missouri and Kansas, traversed the short-grass plains along the Arkansas River valley, entered the semi-arid Southwest, and descended through the mountains or across the Cimarron Desert into the Rio Grande valley before reaching Santa Fe. In modern terms the Trail crosses Missouri, Kansas, Colorado (or the Oklahoma Panhandle on the Cimarron Cutoff), and New Mexico.

The Trail operated in two commercial modes. In the first decade (1821–1830), small trading parties carried manufactured goods from Missouri to exchange for silver, furs, and mules in Santa Fe and the surrounding New Mexico markets — a trade permitted after Mexican independence from Spain (1821) opened New Mexico to U.S. commerce for the first time. By the 1830s, the trade had professionalized and scaled: large caravans of 100–300 wagons, carrying investment-grade territory in merchandise, organized at Independence or Westport Landing (modern Kansas City) each spring, elected captains, hired experienced hunters and herders, and traveled in disciplined wagon formations as protection against Comanche and Kiowa raiding. The U.S. Congress surveyed and improved the Trail in 1825, appropriating funds for the first federal road-survey west of Missouri. By the 1840s, the Trail was the principal economic lifeline connecting the Anglo-American commercial world to the Mexican Southwest.

The principal Trail division point was at the big bend of the Arkansas River near modern Dodge City Kansas, where the Trail split into two routes. The Cimarron Cutoff (the commercial shortcut, also called the Dry Route) headed southwest across the Cimarron Desert, a waterless sixty-mile stretch between the Arkansas River and the Cimarron River in the Oklahoma Panhandle, then continued through northeastern New Mexico via Rabbit Ears Creek, Point of Rocks, and Wagon Mound to Fort Union and Santa Fe. The Cimarron Cutoff was approximately 100 miles shorter but crossed exposed, waterless terrain heavily raided by Comanche and Kiowa warriors — the most dangerous stretch of the entire Trail. The Mountain Route (Raton Route) turned northwest along the Arkansas River to Bent's Fort (near modern La Junta Colorado), then crossed the Raton Mountains through Raton Pass (7,834 feet) and descended through northeastern New Mexico via Cimarron NM, Rayado NM, and Fort Union NM. The Mountain Route was longer and harder on wagons but offered reliable water, wood, and the protection and resupply of Bent's Fort and Fort Union.

The Trail supported a chain of distinctive landmark sites whose names recur throughout the entire Trail literature. In New Mexico: Point of Rocks (northeastern NM, near Springer, a rocky promontory visible for miles across the Cimarron Cutoff plain); Wagon Mound (Union County NM, the mesa whose wagon-profile silhouette made it the most famous New Mexico landmark on the Cimarron Cutoff); Fort Union (near Mora NM, established 1851, the principal U.S. Army supply depot and garrison in the Southwest, where both Trail routes converged); Pecos Pueblo (Pecos NM, the ancient pueblo ruin that stood at the gateway to the Santa Fe Valley and was visited by virtually every Trail traveler); La Fonda on the Plaza (Santa Fe NM, the inn at the trail's end, operating continuously in some form from the Trail era to the present). The ruts of the Trail itself survive at Fort Union National Monument — the NPS preserves visible wagon-rut depressions in the grassland surrounding the fort ruins, the most accessible and most poignant physical remnant of the Trail in New Mexico.

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Josiah Gregg: Commerce of the Prairies (1844) — The Foundational Narrative

Josiah Gregg (July 19, 1806 — February 25, 1850, closed pool) was a Missourian — born in Overton County Tennessee, raised in Missouri — who made his first Santa Fe Trail journey in 1831 at age twenty-four, seeking relief from a chronic illness. He spent nine years in the Trail trade, making eight round trips, becoming fluent in Spanish, studying the natural history of the prairies and New Mexico, and accumulating the observations and journals that became Commerce of the Prairies.

Commerce of the Prairies: Or, the Journal of a Santa Fe Trader, During Eight Expeditions Across the Great Western Prairies, and a Residence of Nearly Nine Years in Northern Mexico was published by Henry G. Langley, 8 Astor House, New York, 1844, in two octavo volumes. It is simultaneously the most systematic account of Trail geography and commerce, the most detailed ethnographic portrait of Comanche and Kiowa peoples of the prairies, the most thorough description of New Mexico society in the 1830s, and the most important natural-history survey of the Great Plains from a non-scientific observer of the period. Washington Irving praised it as the finest American travel narrative since Lewis and Clark. A folding map — Map of the Indian Territory, Northern Texas and New Mexico — was included in the first edition and is critical to full value.

Tier 1 Trophy The 1844 Langley two-volume first in original binding with complete folding map is the extreme-trophy item of the entire Trail collecting category. Fine two-volume sets with intact original cloth bindings, tight text blocks, and the folding map present command mid-four-figure to low-five-figure prices at specialist dealers and major auction houses (Heritage Auctions Western Americana, Cowan's, Swann Galleries). A worn set without the map or with rebinding trades at heavy discount. The 1844 corrected second Langley edition and the 1845 J. Winchester third edition are secondary Tier 1 targets. University of Oklahoma Press 1954 first hardcover edited by Max Moorhead is the Tier 2 scholar-collector acquisition. Nebraska Bison Books paperback reprintings are Tier 3 working library.

Gregg died in California in 1850, his health again broken, shortly after serving as a botanist-naturalist on a California coastal expedition. He never returned to New Mexico and never knew the influence his work would have. Commerce of the Prairies was reprinted fourteen times in the nineteenth century, translated into German, and was cited by virtually every subsequent Trail writer as the foundational source. Josiah Gregg's Commerce of the Prairies stands to Santa Fe Trail literature as Meriwether Lewis and William Clark's journals stand to Pacific Northwest exploration — the ur-text from which everything else descends.

Collecting note: the original Gregg 1844 appears at auction approximately two to four times per decade in dealer-quality condition. The majority of the surviving population is in library or institutional collections. Private owners include advanced Western Americana collectors and estate descendants of nineteenth-century Midwest and Southwest commercial families. The presence of the folding map is the primary condition evaluation criterion after overall binding integrity; maps were frequently removed and framed or discarded. Provenance matters: copies with documented Trail-era ownership lineage command premium.

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Susan Shelby Magoffin: The Only Woman's Trail Diary (1926)

Susan Shelby Magoffin (July 30, 1827 — October 26, 1855, closed pool) was an eighteen-year-old Kentucky bride, granddaughter of Governor Isaac Shelby of Kentucky, who accompanied her husband Samuel Magoffin — an established Santa Fe Trail merchant and brother to James Wiley Magoffin, the secret U.S. agent who negotiated the peaceful surrender of Santa Fe to Kearny in 1846 — on a trading wagon journey beginning June 11, 1846 from Independence Missouri.

She kept a diary in a small leather-bound notebook through the journey down the Trail, through the arrival of Kearny's Army of the West (she camped near the army's column and observed the military occupation firsthand), through the entry into Santa Fe in late August 1846, and continuing into Chihuahua Mexico until September 1847. The diary covers 16 months of extraordinary observation — Trail camps at Council Grove, Bent's Fort, the Cimarron Cutoff, Point of Rocks, Fort Union, the descent into Santa Fe, the social world of Mexican New Mexico, and the effects of the American military occupation on the resident population.

Tier 1 Down the Santa Fe Trail and into Mexico: The Diary of Susan Shelby Magoffin 1846–1847, edited by Stella M. Drumm, Yale University Press, New Haven, 1926. The 1926 Yale University Press first hardcover with original dust jacket (dust jackets of this era and press-run rarely survive) is the primary Magoffin collector target, trading mid-three-figure to low-four-figure in fine condition with jacket. Without jacket, fine copies trade low-three-figure. The manuscript diary is held at the Missouri Historical Society, St. Louis.

The Magoffin diary's uniqueness cannot be overstated. There is no other woman's sustained diary narrative of a complete Santa Fe Trail crossing. The Susan Shelby Magoffin diary is singular — and singularity in primary-source Western Americana drives sustained collector demand across generations. Subsequent editions: University of Nebraska Press Bison Books reprint (1982, introduction by Howard Lamar) is the standard Tier 2 scholar-collector acquisition. Multiple paperback reprintings are Tier 3. The 1926 Yale first is the artifact; all subsequent editions are reprintings of Drumm's editorial work and the manuscript text.

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Lewis Garrard: Wah-To-Yah and the Taos Trail (1850)

Lewis Hector Garrard (June 13, 1829 — November 20, 1887, closed pool) was a sixteen-year-old Cincinnati boy when he joined a Santa Fe Trail trading caravan in 1846–1847, spending the winter at Bent's Fort, traveling the Mountain Route through Raton Pass, and arriving in Taos NM shortly after the Taos Revolt of January 19, 1847. The Revolt — an armed uprising by Taos Pueblo men and Hispano New Mexicans against the American occupation, in which Governor Charles Bent and several other Americans were killed — was suppressed by U.S. Army forces in February 1847. Garrard witnessed the military trials and execution of the Revolt's leaders at Taos.

Tier 1 Wah-To-Yah and the Taos Trail; or, Prairie Travel and Scalp Dances, with a Look at Los Rancheros from Muleback and the Rocky Mountain Camp-fire, H.W. Derby & Co., Cincinnati, 1850. The 1850 Derby Cincinnati first hardcover is the third major Trail narrative Tier 1 target — genuinely scarce, western-press print run, eighty-plus years of attrition, dominated at auction by institutional and dealer copies. Fine copies with original binding trade mid-to-upper three-figure at specialist dealers; documented copies with dust jackets (an 1850 item — jackets are essentially nonexistent, it is a wrappered or original board binding) trade by condition of the binding and text integrity alone.

Garrard's narrative is celebrated for its immediacy and its youth — he was seventeen when the events occurred and nineteen when he published the account. The description of the Taos Revolt trials is the principal eyewitness record of those proceedings. The title comes from the Ute name for the twin-peaked Spanish Peaks in southern Colorado (Huajatolla, "breasts of the world" in Ute, anglicized to Wah-To-Yah), which Garrard used as a journey landmark. The book was reprinted by Arthur H. Clark Company, Glendale CA, in 1938, and by University of Oklahoma Press (1955, edited by Ralph Bieber) — the OU Press 1955 first is the standard Tier 2 collector target.

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Bent's Fort and the Bent Brothers: The Trail's Central Institution

Charles Bent (1799–1847, closed pool) and William Bent (1809–1869, closed pool), with Ceran St. Vrain, built Bent's Fort on the north bank of the Arkansas River near modern La Junta Colorado in 1833. For the next seventeen years, Bent's Fort was the central institution of the Mountain Route Santa Fe Trail — the principal trading post where Trail caravans resupplied, travelers rested, and the fur trade of the southern Rocky Mountains intersected with the Overland Trail commerce. Bent's Fort was simultaneously a trading post, a diplomatic venue (hosting delegations of Cheyenne, Arapaho, Comanche, Kiowa, and other plains nations), a provisioner for military expeditions, and the social hub of the southwestern fur trade. Kit Carson worked there; John C. Frémont provisioned there; Kearny's Army of the West camped there in 1846 en route to Santa Fe.

Charles Bent moved to Taos and became a merchant and political figure in New Mexico under both Mexican and American rule; he was appointed by General Kearny as the first American civil governor of New Mexico Territory in September 1846 and was killed in his Taos home on January 19, 1847, in the opening hours of the Taos Revolt. William Bent continued operating the fort and later Bent's New Fort (downstream on the Arkansas) until his death in 1869. William Bent's mixed-heritage family — he married Owl Woman, a Cheyenne woman, and their children lived in both Cheyenne and Anglo worlds — is one of the most important borderlands family histories of the mid-nineteenth-century Southwest.

The principal Bent's Fort collecting bibliography: David Lavender Bent's Fort (Doubleday 1954 first hardcover, the standard Bent's Fort narrative history — a book distinguished by elegant prose and comprehensive archival research, the definitive popular treatment); George Bird Grinnell Bent's Old Fort and Its Builders (Kansas State Historical Society 1923, the scholarly monograph from Grinnell's interviews with William Bent's son George Bent). The Lavender 1954 Doubleday first hardcover with original dust jacket is the Tier 1 Bent's Fort collector target; signed Lavender copies are scarce and command premium. Grinnell 1923 Kansas State Historical Society is a genuinely scarce institutional imprint. The NPS reconstructed Bent's Old Fort National Historic Site (near La Junta CO, 1976 reconstruction based on archaeological and archival documentation) is served by its own interpretive publication program through the Western National Parks Association.

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Kearny's Army of the West and the Military Trail Literature

Brigadier General Stephen Watts Kearny (August 30, 1794 — October 31, 1848, closed pool) assembled the Army of the West at Fort Leavenworth Kansas in June 1846 — approximately 1,700 regulars of the 1st Dragoons and Missouri volunteer infantry, plus artillery and supply wagons — and marched it west along the Santa Fe Trail to Santa Fe, arriving August 18, 1846, and claiming New Mexico for the United States. The march was accomplished in approximately 49 days; the Army covered the 900-mile Trail distance at a pace that exhausted men and animals but achieved its political-military objective of occupying Santa Fe before any meaningful Mexican resistance could be organized. Mexican Governor Manuel Armijo, faced with Kearny's column and undermined by the covert diplomacy of James Wiley Magoffin (Susan Shelby Magoffin's brother-in-law), withdrew south toward El Paso without battle.

The primary military Trail literature documenting the 1846 Kearny march: Frank S. Edwards A Campaign in New Mexico with Colonel Doniphan (Henry Carey Baird, Philadelphia, 1847 — one of the earliest and scarcest Kearny-campaign firsthand accounts, an immediate post-campaign publication by a volunteer soldier, genuinely scarce at fine condition); Abraham Robinson Johnston, Marcellus Ball Edwards, and Philip Gooch Ferguson Marching with the Army of the West 1846–1848 (Arthur H. Clark Company, Glendale CA, 1936 — the standard primary-source compilation of the three principal soldier journals from the Kearny march, edited by Ralph P. Bieber, the Tier 1 Arthur H. Clark series collector target for the Kearny campaign). The Arthur H. Clark Company (Glendale CA, later Cleveland OH) is itself a major collecting category: the Clark series of Western Americana primary-source compilations from the 1930s–1960s (the Southwest Historical Series, the Far West and Rockies Historical Series, and the Frontier Series) are a distinct Tier 1–2 collecting subcategory that intersects with Trail, Civil War, and frontier military collecting throughout.

The military Trail history at Fort Union: Fort Union National Monument (NPS, near Mora NM, established 1954) was established in 1851 specifically to guard the Mountain Route of the Santa Fe Trail and protect the supply line from the Missouri trailhead to Santa Fe. Three successive fort constructions occupied the site: the first fort (1851–1863, a log-and-earth construction), the star fort (1861–1863, a Confederate threat during the Civil War), and the third fort (1863–1891, the large brick-and-adobe complex whose ruins survive today as the largest nineteenth-century U.S. Army fortification ruins in the American West). Fort Union was the principal military logistics hub for the Southwest through the Apache Wars, the Navajo Long Walk, the Comanche-Kiowa campaigns, and the final Apache resistance. The NPS Fort Union visitor and interpretive publications are Tier 3 acquisitions; the specialist scholarship is documented through the journals of the New Mexico Historical Review (UNM, continuous publication) and the Western Historical Quarterly.

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Jack Rittenhouse and the Definitive Trail Bibliography (1971)

Jack DeVere Rittenhouse (1912–1991, closed pool) is the most important bibliographer in Santa Fe Trail collecting history. An Albuquerque-based publisher, bibliographer, and Western Americana specialist, Rittenhouse arrived in New Mexico via California — where he had published A Guide Book to Highway 66 (Los Angeles 1946, his own publication, the first Route 66 guidebook, the Tier 1 extreme-trophy item of Route 66 collecting, documented at /route-66-new-mexico-books-collecting). He established Stagecoach Press in Santa Fe in 1959, which became one of the important small presses for New Mexico regional literature and Western Americana.

The Santa Fe Trail: A Historical Bibliography, Jack D. Rittenhouse, University of New Mexico Press, Albuquerque, 1971. One hardcover volume with comprehensive index, annotating over 700 books, articles, government documents, diaries, and maps related to the Trail, organized thematically with full bibliographic details and evaluative notes. This is the standard working reference for every Trail collector, dealer, and researcher — the tool used to identify, evaluate, and place any Trail-related book in the collecting hierarchy.

Tier 1 UNM Press 1971 first hardcover signed by Rittenhouse (closed pool 1991, signed copies are finite and become scarcer each decade) trades low-to-mid three-figure at specialist dealers. Unsigned 1971 UNM Press first hardcover in fine condition trades upper-two-figure to low-three-figure. The Rittenhouse bibliography is also a significant item in the Route 66 collecting category — given Rittenhouse's 1946 Highway 66 guidebook prominence, his bibliography carries dual-category collector demand.

Rittenhouse's 1946 A Guide Book to Highway 66 and his 1971 Santa Fe Trail: A Historical Bibliography together represent the two defining bibliographic contributions of one man to two of the most competitive categories of New Mexico regional collecting. The Santa Fe Trail Association's Wagon Tracks quarterly (Great Bend KS, continuous publication since 1986) substantially extends the bibliographic record for post-1971 Trail publications; the SFTA has also published supplementary Trail bibliographies updating and expanding Rittenhouse's foundational work.

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Marc Simmons and the Contemporary Trail Scholarship Canon

Marc Simmons (1937–2023, Cerrillos NM) is the most prolific and most widely read New Mexico historian and the most important contemporary voice in Santa Fe Trail scholarship. Based in Cerrillos NM (near Santa Fe) for his entire career, Simmons has published over forty books on New Mexico history, edited primary sources, written a long-running newspaper column ("Trail Dust," appearing weekly in the Santa Fe New Mexican and other regional papers for over four decades), and served as the founding president of the Santa Fe Trail Association (established 1986). His Trail-focused books include:

Marc Simmons — Principal Trail Titles

Simmons is an active signer at regional bookstore events, Santa Fe Trail Association symposia, New Mexico Book Co-op events, and Albuquerque book fairs. Signed Simmons first editions are acquirable at low-to-mid three-figure prices through regional specialist dealers (Tom Davies Books Albuquerque, Margolis & Moss Santa Fe, Collected Works Bookstore Santa Fe) and from the Santa Fe Trail Association directly. The Following the Santa Fe Trail 1984 Ancient City Press first hardcover with the original dust jacket — signed — is the Tier 1 Simmons Trail target; unsigned fine copies are solid Tier 2 acquisitions. If you have Santa Fe Trail books you're considering selling, my Santa Fe book buying service evaluates Trail literature and other Southwest collectibles.

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David Dary, Marian Meyer, and the Contemporary Narrative Canon

David Dary The Santa Fe Trail: Its History, Legends, and Lore (Alfred A. Knopf, New York, 2000 first hardcover with dust jacket). Dary (1934–2012, closed pool) was a University of Kansas journalism professor and regional history writer whose Knopf commission produced the most comprehensive single-volume contemporary narrative Trail history. The book covers Trail geography, economics, the principal eyewitness writers, the military Trail, Bent's Fort, the Indian nations of the Trail corridor, the Mexican War period, and the Trail's eclipse by the railroad. The 2000 Knopf first hardcover with dust jacket is a Tier 2 collector target — Knopf first hardcovers from 2000 remain accessible; signed Dary copies are scarce (he signed at limited regional events; closed pool 2012).

Tier 2 Dary 2000 Knopf first hardcover signed is the target; unsigned fine copy is solid Tier 2. The Knopf production quality — maps, illustrations, bibliography, index — makes this the standard contemporary one-volume Trail library acquisition above all comparable works.

Marian Meyer Mary Donoho: New First Lady of the Santa Fe Trail (Ancient City Press, Santa Fe NM, 1991 first hardcover). Mary Donoho (1807–1880) was the first American woman to travel the entire length of the Santa Fe Trail, making the journey in 1833 with her husband William Donoho and operating the Exchange Hotel on the Santa Fe Plaza — the forerunner of La Fonda. Meyer's biography, based on extensive archival research, is the principal work documenting early Anglo women's presence in the Trail trade. Tier 2 collector target; Ancient City Press first hardcovers are regional small-press items with modest print runs.

William Patrick Brown The Santa Fe Trail (Patrice Press, Tucson AZ, 1988 first hardcover). Brown's work provides a compact, reliable Trail narrative with strong photographic documentation of surviving Trail sites and artifacts. Patrice Press (Tucson) was a specialist Western history publisher with a focused Western Americana list; their first editions are consistently sought as regional-press collector items. Tier 2 target at fine condition.

The Santa Fe Trail Association (SFTA, founded 1986, Great Bend KS, santafetrail.org) publishes Wagon Tracks quarterly, the principal ongoing Trail scholarship periodical. Complete runs of Wagon Tracks from 1986 forward are a significant Tier 2–3 collecting category; individual issues are Tier 3. The SFTA also produces trail guides, educational materials, symposium proceedings (biennial symposia), and supplementary bibliographies. SFTA membership archives and symposium proceedings from the early years (1986–1995) are scarcest.

The Companion Trail Library: Essential Secondary Works

Beyond the primary eyewitness narratives and the Rittenhouse bibliography, a serious Trail library incorporates works across the full range of Trail-related subjects. The principal companion acquisitions:

Companion Library — Tier 2 Acquisitions

The Arthur H. Clark Company imprint deserves special mention as a collecting subcategory. The Clark Company (Glendale CA, founded 1902, later Cleveland OH, later Spokane WA) published definitive primary-source compilations across Western American history from the early twentieth century through the 1970s: the Southwest Historical Series (edited Ralph P. Bieber, 12 volumes), the Far West and Rockies Historical Series (edited Bieber and LeRoy Hafen), and multiple individual Trail, fur trade, and frontier military titles. Arthur H. Clark first hardcovers are consistently Tier 1–2 collector targets across Western Americana; the Clark series first editions with original bindings trade upper mid-range to serious collector territory depending on title and condition. The Clark Trail-related titles include: Bieber's edition of Marching with the Army of the West (1936); George Kendall Narrative of the Texan Santa Fe Expedition (Clark reprinted edition); Thomas James Three Years Among the Indians and Mexicans (Clark 1953 edition). A complete Arthur H. Clark Southwest Historical Series is itself a Tier 1 collecting achievement.

New Mexico Trail Sites: A Collector's Geographical Index

For New Mexico collectors, the Trail's physical presence in the state — the surviving landmarks, ruts, and NPS sites — creates a distinctive regional connection to the literature that is unique among Trail-collecting regional markets. New Mexico Trail geography for collectors:

Point of Rocks (northeastern NM, near Springer). On the Cimarron Cutoff alignment, Point of Rocks was the principal campsite and landmark after crossing into New Mexico from the Oklahoma Panhandle. Every major Trail narrative mentions it; Susan Shelby Magoffin camped here; Josiah Gregg describes it in Commerce of the Prairies. The site is on private ranchland, not publicly accessible, but visible from NM Highway 56. The Canadian River canyon near Point of Rocks was the site of several Comanche raiding attacks on Trail caravans in the 1840s.

Wagon Mound (Union County NM). The mesa whose distinctive wagon-profile silhouette gave the modern village its name was the final major Trail landmark before Fort Union on the Cimarron Cutoff alignment — a sight of profound relief for westbound travelers who had survived the Cimarron Desert. The village of Wagon Mound (population approximately 300) sits at the base of the mesa on NM Highway 120. The site of the 1850 Wagon Mound Massacre — a Jicarilla Apache and Ute attack on a small mail party — is nearby and is documented in Trail literature through Leo Oliva's fort and mail history work.

Fort Union National Monument (near Mora NM, NPS). The trail ruts at Fort Union — the most accessible surviving Trail ruts in New Mexico — are preserved in the grassland surrounding the third fort ruins (1863–1891). Visitors can walk among the ruins of the brick-and-adobe barracks, commissary, hospital, and officers' quarters of the largest nineteenth-century U.S. Army fortification complex in the American West — documented in the NM military forts collecting guide, and see the actual rut depressions of the Trail's final approach from the east. Fort Union is open year-round; the visitor center bookstore stocks the principal Trail and Fort Union scholarship. NPS Fort Union publications (visitor guides, interpretive brochures, ranger talks bibliography) are Tier 3 collecting ephemera.

Pecos Pueblo / Pecos National Historical Park (Pecos NM, NPS). The ancient Pecos Pueblo — occupied from approximately 800 CE to 1838, when the last seventeen Pecos survivors relocated to Jemez Pueblo — stands at the gateway to the Santa Fe Valley. Trail travelers descending from Fort Union and heading toward Santa Fe passed Pecos Pueblo as one of the last major landmarks before the Trail's terminus. The ruins of the Pecos mission church (1717) and the pueblo itself are preserved at Pecos National Historical Park; the park interpretive program connects Trail, Civil War (Battle of Glorieta Pass, March 1862, fought nearby), and Pueblo history in a single NPS unit.

La Fonda on the Plaza (100 East San Francisco Street, Santa Fe NM). The western terminus of the Santa Fe Trail was the fonda — the inn — on the northeast corner of the Santa Fe Plaza. An inn has operated continuously on this site since at least the 1820s; the name La Fonda is recorded from that era. The current La Fonda building was constructed in 1922 and redesigned by Mary Colter in 1925 with an elaborate Pueblo Revival interior (documented at /pueblo-revival-architecture-books-collecting). The La Fonda historical archive and the Santa Fe Plaza itself are the physical endpoint of every Trail narrative from Gregg to Magoffin to Garrard to Kearny.

Three-Tier Collector Market

Tier 1 Trophy (mid-three-figure to low-five-figure or higher):

Tier 2 Collector (low-to-mid three-figure):

Tier 3 Working Library (upper-two-figure to low-three-figure): Subsequent printings and paperback reprint editions of all Tier 1 and Tier 2 works; Santa Fe Trail Association Wagon Tracks quarterly back issues (1986–present); NPS Fort Union National Monument and Bent's Old Fort National Historic Site visitor and interpretive publications; Marc Simmons paperback editions and Trail Dust column collections; regional Trail-guide publications (American Trails Society, National Geographic Trail guides, Scenic Byways guides); Comanches of the Plains — the broader Plains Indian raiding history context (documented more fully at /comanche-apache-plains-warfare-books-collecting); New Mexico History Museum and Palace of the Governors exhibition catalogs with Trail content; Western National Parks Association visitor booklets for Fort Union and Pecos National Historical Park; Sunstone Press Trail and New Mexico history paperbacks.

Five Identification Problems for Trail Collectors

Problem one: Gregg 1844 Langley first edition versus subsequent editions. The 1844 first is the artifact; it was followed immediately by a corrected second Langley edition the same year, then a 1845 J. Winchester third edition, then numerous nineteenth-century reprintings (including a substantial 1857 Philadelphia J.B. Lippincott reprint and later Midwest reprintings). The 1844 first edition is identified by the Henry G. Langley imprint, the "8 Astor House New York" address, the 1844 copyright date on both volumes, and the presence of the folding Map of the Indian Territory, Northern Texas and New Mexico (engraved by Sherman & Smith, New York). The corrected 1844 second edition is very similar in appearance to the first — it requires comparison of known first-edition textual variants to authenticate definitively. The nineteenth-century reprint editions use substantially different typefaces and binding materials that distinguish them from the Langley firsts on inspection. All twentieth-century editions (OU Press, Bison Books, etc.) are easily identified by modern production and copyright pages.

Problem two: Magoffin 1926 Yale with and without dust jacket. The 1926 Yale University Press printing was a modest institutional run; dust jackets from this era were printed on thin paper and were discarded, lost, or destroyed at very high rates. The presence of an original 1926 Yale dust jacket on the Magoffin makes a significant difference in value — a fine copy with jacket is a qualitatively different collector artifact from a fine copy without. Authentication of the jacket itself (period paper, period typography, period printing process) is part of the evaluation for any offered copy with a jacket present.

Problem three: Rittenhouse closed-pool authentication for signed copies. Jack Rittenhouse died in 1991; his signature on the 1971 UNM Press first hardcover or on any of his other publications is a closed-pool artifact. Rittenhouse signed at Stagecoach Press events, New Mexico Book Co-op events, Santa Fe Trail Association symposia, and regional bookstore signings through the 1970s and 1980s. A signed Rittenhouse copy should have provenance — acquired at one of these events, from an original purchaser, or from a documented source. Forgery is unlikely at current price levels but authentication by specialist dealers is standard practice for any signed copy offered above low-three-figure.

Problem four: Arthur H. Clark Company series first edition identification. The Clark Company's numbered series (Southwest Historical Series, Far West and Rockies Historical Series) are identified by the series name and volume number on the title page, the Glendale CA or later Cleveland OH imprint, and the original plain cloth binding (typically green or brown cloth). Clark series volumes were printed in small runs and rebound by some libraries in non-original cloth; original cloth first editions command premium over rebound copies. The Clark bindings are distinctive — the original production quality is high and the original cloth is identifiable against rebindings on inspection.

Problem five: Marc Simmons edition identification for Following the Santa Fe Trail. Ancient City Press issued the first edition in 1984, a revised edition in 1986, and a further revised edition in 2001. The 1984 first hardcover with original dust jacket is the Tier 1 target; the 1986 revised edition is clearly marked on the copyright page as revised and is a Tier 2 acquisition; the 2001 revised edition is widely available. Signed copies of any edition carry premium, but the 1984 first edition signed is the maximum collector value combination.

NMLP Intake Position — Trail Book Donations

Santa Fe Trail books arrive in NMLP donation pickups with regularity given New Mexico's direct historical connection to the Trail's western end, the Trail ruts at Fort Union (one of the state's most-visited NPS sites), and the substantial regional scholarly and general-reader interest in Trail history. Donor demographic concentration: Albuquerque-Santa Fe-Las Vegas-Mora County Anglo professional retirees with substantial NM history libraries (the largest single-category donation pool for Trail titles); estate donations from families along the Cimarron Cutoff corridor (northeastern NM ranching and farming families whose land in some cases intersects Trail ruts and landmarks); Santa Fe Trail Association members (the SFTA maintains a substantial New Mexico chapter membership base); Fort Union National Monument volunteer and Friends organization members; UNM history and regional studies faculty and graduate estate donations; Sunstone Press-adjacent NM literary community donations (Rittenhouse founded Stagecoach Press, and Stagecoach-associated authors and editors frequently have Trail library holdings).

NMLP routes Tier 1 trophy items through its book evaluation and resale services — Gregg 1844 Langley first editions (any copy, any condition), Magoffin 1926 Yale first hardcovers, Garrard 1850 Derby first hardcovers, signed Rittenhouse 1971 UNM Press first hardcovers, signed Marc Simmons Trail firsts, David Lavender Bent's Fort 1954 Doubleday first with jacket, Arthur H. Clark Southwest Historical Series first hardcovers — to specialist Western Americana dealers: Heritage Auctions (Western Americana division, Dallas TX, the principal Trail auction venue), Cowan's Auctions (Western Americana, Cincinnati OH), William Reese Company (New Haven CT, the preeminent U.S. antiquarian firm for Western Americana), Margolis & Moss (Santa Fe NM, the principal NM regional specialist dealer), Tom Davies Books (Albuquerque NM), Brian Lebel's Old West Auction (annual Mesa AZ auction, the principal Western Americana specialist auction), and the Santa Fe Trail Association's rare-books referral program.

Tier 2 trade firsts and signed contemporary Trail titles route through SellBooksABQ standard hand-sort with Trail-collector outreach. Tier 3 paperback reprints, Wagon Tracks back issues, and NPS visitor publications — supported by donor contributions — route to APS Title I schools (New Mexico state social studies curriculum includes Santa Fe Trail content at multiple grade levels), the New Mexico History Museum library, the UNM Center for Southwest Research, the Palace of the Governors library (Santa Fe NM), the Fort Union National Monument visitor center bookstore (when accepting donated stock), Pecos National Historical Park visitor center, Bernalillo County Adult and Family Literacy Programs, and Little Free Library stocking across the northeastern NM Trail corridor (Wagon Mound, Springer, Cimarron, Rayado, Mora, Watrous).

Free statewide pickup with no condition limit and no minimum quantity. Call or text 702-496-4214 or schedule your pickup online.

Have Santa Fe Trail Books to Donate?

Gregg, Magoffin, Garrard, Rittenhouse, Simmons, Lavender, Clark series — any condition, any quantity. I handle free statewide pickup throughout New Mexico.

Call 702-496-4214 or Schedule Pickup

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Cite This Guide

Eldred, J. (May 2026). Santa Fe Trail Books: A Collector's Authority Guide. New Mexico Literacy Project.

https://newmexicoliteracyproject.org/santa-fe-trail-books-collecting

Content is original research by Josh Eldred. Licensed under CC BY 4.0. Cite with attribution.