Thursday, April 07, 2005
Copyright © Las Vegas Review-Journal
Trail riders follow pioneers' footsteps
By K.C. HOWARD
REVIEW-JOURNAL
The Review-Journal Centennial Ride across the Old Spanish Trail begins today at China Ranch, a family-owned date farm.
Photo by Isaac Brekken.
Date trees grow on China Ranch, a family-owned farm located near the Old Spanish Trail Highway off Furnace Creek Road.
Photo by Isaac Brekken.
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TECOPA, Calif.
As the sun set behind the hills surrounding China Ranch, Twila Gutierrez stirred baked beans in a large iron kettle.
"You can get into those highfalutin Dutch oven contests," she said Wednesday night.
But she and her family, who run the Packin' Iron Dutch Oven Catering company, like to keep the menu simple.
She, her daughter and husband will be cooking potatoes, eggs and ham -- the staples of any camp regimen -- this week on the Review-Journal Centennial Ride on the Old Spanish Trail.
About 60 people will make the 60-mile ride from Tecopa, Calif., to Bonnie Springs Ranch. The ride starts today at China Ranch, a family-owned date farm located near the Old Spanish Trail Highway off Furnace Creek Road.
"I got word this morning there is a vegetarian among us," Gutierrez said.
The ride is a marketing event sponsored by the Review-Journal to commemorate its 100th birthday.
The Las Vegas Age was first published on April 7, 1905. The paper was later acquired by the Clark County Review, which then became the Las Vegas Review-Journal.
The ride will also celebrate the Old Spanish Trail, the all-weather route to Southern California for thousands of traders, gold-miners, Mormons and thieves during the 1800s.
The route connected Santa Fe, N.M., and northern Utah to Los Angeles. In 2002, President Bush designated the route as a national historic trail.
The Las Vegas Valley served as a watering hole along the way for many of the trail's travelers, particularly horse thieves.
"When you talk about the Old Spanish Trail in Las Vegas, everyone thinks this was a main artery, but it wasn't. Everyone wants to romanticize it more than it is," said David Millman, curator of the Nevada State Museum and Historical Society.
The major route went south of Las Vegas along the Colorado River, but the more than 2,000 miles of trail are a maze of individual paths used by Spanish, Mexican and Anglo explorers.
About 60 riders, wranglers, cooks and Review-Journal employees will be on the ride following a path close to that of John C. Fremont's second expedition in 1844.
His group traveled near the Amargosa River and might never have traveled near Las Vegas, which in Spanish means the meadows, had it not been for 11-year-old Pablo Hernandez and a man named Andres Fuentes.
The two Mexicans met Fremont's party in California near the Amargosa River and told him of an Indian massacre at Resting Springs, where Hernandez' mother and father, Fuentes' wife and a resident of New Mexico had been killed.
Fremont and his crew traveled to the site of the massacre
"We traversed the desert, the most sterile and repulsive that we had yet seen," Fremont wrote.
He recalled in his journal the gory bodies of Pablo's family, naked and mutilated and Hernandez' cries, "Mi padre! Mi madre!"
At that point, historians say, Fremont was committed to the Spanish Trail, the version that would lead him through Las Vegas. His map of the expedition would later be copied more than 20,000 times, letting the budding nation know where Las Vegas was located.
Resting Springs, which is located near China Ranch, is now privately owned and surrounded by dense thickets to which the rains of this year have added lime green buds.
"I find bullets out there with the metal detector," said Allen Hardt, caretaker of the Resting Springs Ranch.
He came down to China Ranch on Wednesday to watch the trail riders arrive and prepare for their ride.
About 30 people came in early Wednesday night to get into the spirit of the event.
Las Vegan Jack Hartsell was one rider who showed up around dusk.
"I was born a cowboy. It was just too late," Hartsell said. "I was born 100 years too late. I should have been born in 1846 instead of 1946."
The 58-year-old rented a horse for the ride, packed and then repacked his bags, because he heard a cold front was coming in.
"I had the opportunity years ago in Texas to do a trail ride, and I couldn't get off work," said Hartsell, who is now retired. "To have the opportunity to walk where no one has walked before, in a manner of speaking, we're going to have that."
