This cache is part of the larger Santa Fe Trail GeoTour: santafetrail.org/geocaching Be sure to visit www.santafetrail.org/geocaching to learn about the PASSPORT ACTIVITY to accompany this Geo Tour.
All containers on the Santa Fe National Historic Trail Geo Tour are military ammunition canisters with an identifying Santa Fe Trail Association yellow sticker on the top of the box, under the handle and the dark green geocaching.com ID is on the side of the boxes with the information that provides coordinates, who set the cache and who to contact for information. Each cache contains a logbook to sign, a variety of items that provide information about the Santa Fe Trail as well as swag items. If you are participating in the Passport activity, the code word is located on the inside of the box, on the top of the lid and is clearly identified as Code Word. Permission to set caches has been obtained. We ask that all cachers please respect all property at the sites where our caches are set.
This spring was well known to all travelers who took the Cimarron route because it was the first reliable water supply they encountered since leaving the Arkansas River. This 60-mile stretch between the two rivers was known as the “Jornada,” meaning a desert journey without water. The earliest written description of the spring was made by Joseph C. Brown, a civil engineer who was with a government survey expedition from 1825-1827. Brown described it: "The spring is at the west edge of a marsh green with bull rushes. The marsh is north of the creek and near it, the spring is constant, but the creek is sometimes dry until you ascend it ten or twelve miles, where it will be found running."
Irrigation methods adjacent to the spring have resulted in lowering of the water table and the spring ceased to flow in the 1960s. The name "wagon bed" dates from later use of an old wagon bed as a trough to collect water from the spring. There is a foundation on the site of an ice house. Floods have changed the course of the Cimarron River; the site of the spring is now in the bed of the river rather than on its bank as it was in the days of the Santa Fe Trail.
In 1831, fur trader and noted explorer Jedediah Strong Smith began a fatal trek along the Santa Fe Trail. Smith had gotten involved in the Santa Fe fur trade with partners David Edward Jackson and William L. Sublette. They left St. Louis, MO in April, 1831 with 74 men and 22 wagons. By May, the caravan had progressed to the Jornada stretch of the trail and after three days without water the men and the animals were desperate. Smith, along with another mountain man named Thomas Fitzpatrick rode away from the caravan in search of the spring. The two separated and never returned.
For more information on this site, and events that took place here, visit: http://www.legendsofkansas.com/wagonbedspring.html