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.
For those Santa Fe caravans that took the Cimarron Route, their passage through the grasslands of what is today’s Oklahoma Panhandle was dictated by the scarcity of water. The Cimarron River, which gives the route its name, flows through southwestern Kansas and northeastern Oklahoma. It was one of the principal sources of water on the otherwise dry “waterscrape” section of the Trail that began once caravans had crossed the Arkansas River on the Cimarron Route. With poor grass and scant water, the sandy Cimarron River, as well as infrequent oases like Cold Spring and Flag Spring, defined the landscape as one of the most risky sections of the entire Trail. For much of its length, the Cimarron was often without visible water, but it could frequently be found by intrepid travelers who were willing to dig in its sandy bed. The Cimarron Route through Oklahoma also passes by the rock fortifications of Camp Nichols, built in 1865 by Colonel Kit Carson to help protect caravans from Indian raids—another peril that made this section of the Cimarron Route one that travelers seldom looked forward to.
Today, the remoteness and empty spaces of the region that were so challenging to Santa Fe caravans make it one of the best places for the modern traveler to capture something of the feel of what it must have been like to travel the Santa Fe Trail during its active days.