More than a dozen very new signs are advertising something very old.
New brown signs have popped up on utility poles in some cities, telling of the very primitive road that once brought some of the first immigrants to Southern California.
The signs mark the route of Old Spanish Trail, a collection of pathways from New Mexico, across Utah, Arizona and Nevada, that reached the Inland Empire and Los Angeles generally following what later became another historic byway — Route 66.
The Old Spanish Trail brought early traders and explorers from the east into Southern California, including a group of New Mexican immigrants who founded the Inland Empire’s first towns, Agua Mansa and La Placita, on either side of the Santa Ana River in Colton and Riverside in the mid-1840s.
But knowledge of the trail mostly faded away in the nearly two centuries that passed until Congress in 2002 designated the route as the 1829-1848 Old Spanish National Historic Trail. Members of the Agua Mansa Chapter of the Old Spanish Trail Association recently decided to remind us of the route’s history by putting up the trail marker signs in cities between Cajon Pass and Upland.
Jim Wood of Riverside led the effort, first arranging for the National Parks Service to provide the signs and then negotiating with local cities to install them. To date about half of the 28 signs are in place.
Even with the signs, you’ll not find any physical trace of the route, at least locally. After crossing Cajon Pass, it generally turned west along today’s Foothill Boulevard though following no existing path.
“The first landmark after getting through Cajon Pass was Red Hill,” said Wood, of the hill on the Rancho Cucamonga-Upland border where the Cucamonga Creek flowed. “Travelers also stopped and crossed San Antonio Creek on their way west to San Gabriel Mission and Los Angeles.”
While some earlier explorers had crossed the Southwest before him, Antonio Armijo is credited with making the first trip on the trail from Santa Fe in 1829-30. His party brought blankets and other goods to trade at San Gabriel Mission and returned with horses and mules then in short supply in New Mexico.
Armijo’s route went straight across the Four Corners area, northern Arizona and eventually through what today is Las Vegas. Most of the later users of the trail went farther north into Utah, perhaps for weather reasons or to skirt the Grand Canyon, said Wood.
“These travelers didn’t have an easy time of it,” said Wood. “From what I learned, all of it was done without any wagons, meaning they only had horses and mules, or they walked.”
Western parts of the trail in later years became the route followed by Mormons in supplying their satellite community of San Bernardino.
Wood said he spent lots of time after his retirement reading local history, leading to helping to form the local Old Spanish Trail Association chapter. One discovery he made using satellite technology was to find perhaps the last remaining tracks of the old trail in an area in the desert east of Las Vegas.
This year also marks the 200th anniversary of another key historic trail in the Southwest — the Santa Fe National Historic Trail. It was in 1821 that trader William Bicknell traveled from Missouri to the Spanish settlement of Santa Fe, opening what became a significant route for commerce until the arrival of the railroad.
I’d also like to acknowledge the significant assistance of reader John Atwater in the preparation of this item.
Pain in the Neck
Long after the last travelers stopped using the Old Spanish Trail, there were still stories of trial and disaster crossing our deserts — perhaps the best-known tale was of the Joad family in John Steinbeck’s novel, “Grapes of Wrath.”
But two decades before Steinbeck’s classic came the real-life story of the Toube family, whose bizarre experience seems a bit hard to believe.
In late 1916, Russian immigrant Abraham Toube left Portland, Maine, with his family of 10 intending to drive his 8-year-old Chalmers Thirty motor car across the country to California to find a better climate for his ailing wife, reported the Los Angeles Evening Express on Feb. 28, 1917.
That was difficult enough in those days, especially for his 14-year-old son doing most of the driving. Despite the terrible roads, they had made it all the way to western Arizona when they took a wrong turn and crashed in a creek, ruining part of the vehicle’s transmission.
The crash made the car’s forward gears inoperable, leaving only the reverse gear in working order. Driving in reverse. the Chalmers managed to reach Needles, but the family had no money for repairs.
They did the only thing available to them — the rather amazing task of driving the touring car backwards for more than 250 miles on mostly dirt roads. It took almost 10 days after leaving Needles before the family backed its way into the Inland Empire, passing through Riverside and reaching Ontario on Feb. 28, explained the Ontario Daily Report.
Their pain in the neck came to an end the following day with them driving on into Los Angeles. Later news accounts said the Toubes eventually made it to Seattle, though in a more straight-forward manner after getting the transmission repaired.
Thanks to Patty Edwards of the Ontario Library for her assistance in this story.
Joe Blackstock writes on Inland Empire history. He can be reached at joe.blackstock@gmail.com or Twitter @JoeBlackstock. Check out some of our columns of the past at Inland Empire Stories on Facebook at www.facebook.com/IEHistory.