This cache is part of the larger Santa Fe Trail GeoTour. Be sure to visit www.santafetrail.org/geocaching to learn about the PASSPORT ACTIVITY to accompany this Geo Tour.
Rayado is a certified site of the Santa Fe National Historic Trail. It was at this place that Lucien Maxwell and famed mountain man Kit Carson, settled and built their residences. This is also the place where the Santa Fe Trail crossed the Rayado River. Rayado was the point where the Mountain route and two of its side trails rejoined. There was a military camp at Rayado in the early 1850s to help protect this part of the Mountain route. When Maxwell moved to Cimarron, Jesus G. Abreu took over the property. The village served as a resting place, trading area and stage stop along the Mountain Route of the SFT. Be sure to allow time to visit the Abreu family chapel and the Kit Carson Museum.
This area is now owned by the Philmont Boy Scout Ranch. Be sure to stop and visit their excellent museum, library and gift shop, which is also the site of a DAR marker and a fine collection of horse-drawn vehicles, including nitro-glycerin wagon (used to haul nitro-glycerin to the mines in the area).
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.