I originally started thinking about this piece when the City put out a bid for a sculpture to go up on the old Santa Fe Trail at Museum Hill. I was pretty excited about it. Not only because I'm from Missouri, where the Trail started, but because it was a damn good commission and it would have fed us for quite a while.
So, you know me. I did a whole bunch of research and I really got into the story: People in the East thought Santa Fe was this kind of magical place, ever since Coronado and the legend about the 'Cities of Gold'. But the Spanish kept everybody else out for hundreds of years. If you went there, they arrested you, because they wanted to control all the trade and the profits from Mexico City.
Then the Mexicans threw the Spanish out. As soon as that word hit the States, a guy named Becknell took off from Franklin, Missouri to open the Trail. You know, you hear stories about intrepid pioneers and stuff, but the truth is, he was dead broke.
They were going to throw him in jail for his debts, so he put together a few guys and some trade goods and took off for Santa Fe.
It took them a couple months to make the 900 miles, but when they got here, they sold everything they had and made a hell of a profit. The story is, they got paid in silver, and when they came back to Franklin, they cut open a bag of coins and let them spill into the street for everybody to see. Missouri was a pretty poor place, and all of a sudden, everybody wanted to go to Santa Fe.
They traded anything they could. The Americans had cloth and guns and tools and housewares, and the New Mexicans had silver and gold and wool. They also had mules. You've heard the saying, 'Stubborn as a Missouri mule, right? But I bet you didn't know most of those mules came from Santa Fe in the old days.
These guys came down and fell in love with the Spanish and Norteña women, too.
They were beautiful and exotic, and a lot of those old boys either took them back to Missouri or stayed in Santa Fe to raise a family.
It was a pretty good thing for a while, but more people moved out west and they needed more stuff, and it got to the point that the railroads figured they could make money carrying it. When the Atchison, Topeka and Santa Fe line got to Lamy, just south of Santa Fe, the Trail was history.
My own Santa Fe Trail kind of came to an abrupt end, too. I'd designed it to be cantilevered out over the road, so you could drive under it. It would have been like 65 feet long. Well, they said it had to be cast in America, and it couldn't cost over $250,000. So I took the maquette out to old Tommy Hicks at the Shidoni Foundry and asked him for an estimate. There are six mules in that piece and he told me just the mules would be $90,000 each. The whole thing would have cost two to three million dollars!
Man, that right there was the end of the trail for me.
- GIB SINGLETON