Day 54 -- Dodge City, Kansas to Clayton, New Mexico -- 211 Miles

Not much to report on the Blog tonight as we spent the better part of the day cruising the lightly-used Interstate 56 all the way from Dodge City, Kansas, to the sparsely-populated village of Clayton, New Mexico. I chose Clayton as it appeared to have three things we needed: a driving distance from Dodge City of around two hundred miles; a suitable, full-service camp once we had driven that distance; and a miles-saving diagonal route to central New Mexico where we hope we can avoid the worst of the freezing temperatures of the Rocky Mountains.

The owner, Jeff, tells me that they have dinosaur prints in the sagelands north of town if we're looking for something out of the ordinary to see while in the area. He says townsfolk and other interested New Mexico state politicos are trying to come up with a way to protect the prints from the elements, but so far have not hit upon a plan that guarantees funding.

Speaking of Jeff, he is an ex-Los Angeles County boy just like me and is thoroughly acquainted with northern Nevada as his grandparents lived just down the road from Concetta and me in the Nevada town of Gardnerville.

Since I've been wondering just who would move to an isolated town like Clayton where you're probably 200 miles from everywhere, I decided to see what Wikipedia has to say about the place: "Clayton is a town and county seat of Union County, New Mexico. As of the 2010 census, the city population was 2,980. Clayton is a crossroads for tourists heading from Texas to Colorado, Kansas to Oklahoma, and Texas to Taos, New Mexico." Presumably this means I guess that there are plenty of tourists passing through who drop just enough cash in local businesses to support the people not involved in ranching or farming.

Digging deeper into Clayton's past via Wikipedia, I learned that: "The Cimarron Cutoff of the Santa Fe Trail brought some of the first Americans through the Clayton region. The Santa Fe Trail was first established in 1821 after Spanish rule was evicted from Mexico, which opened up trade between Santa Fe and the United States."

"William Becknell, also known as the Father of the Santa Fe Trail, became the first person to utilize the Santa Fe Trail as a trade route between the state of Missouri and Santa Fe. He established the Cimarron Cutoff, also known as the Cimarron Route, as a faster route between countries as the Cimarron Route shortened the Trail by more than 100 miles. The Cimarron Cutoff went straight through the Clayton region where travelers used the Rabbit Ear Mountain as a guiding landmark."

"Eventually travelers along the trail began to appreciate the rich soil around Clayton and the rolling green hills which were perfect for raising livestock. Cattle ranchers and sheepherders established ranches in the area, though they tended to be large and far apart. That changed when the railroad came to the area and Stephen Dorsey, a nearby rancher, received the rights to the area where the railroad ran. He soon laid out a town site."

"Clayton is named for a son of U.S. Senator Stephen W. Dorsey, an Arkansas Republican, originally from Ohio, who served during Reconstruction. The town was established in 1887. The town was a livestock shipping center for herds from the Pecos River and the Texas Panhandle."

And indeed Concetta and I saw quite a few feed lots for livestock as we piled on mile after mile along the Route 56 corridor. Most of Route 56 is our favorite two-lane, though part of it has some pretty marginal pavement, mostly in Oklahoma.

The Kansas portion of Route 56 is also made up of thousands of acres of corn and milo. If you remember reading yesterday's Blog when we actually discovered the existence of milo, you know that it is a grain source that requires only about 2/3 the amount of water than more common crops require.

Ever since I learned about milo, I've been wanting to pull over and clip off a seed head to take home with me. Unfortunately, most of the time there just isn't a place to pull a 32-foot rig to the side of the road so I could go forage in the nearby field. But today I finally found a convenient pull-out and scored a seed head of my very own. I look forward to planting the seeds in my veggie garden just to see if it will grow in Nevada.

And now for a bit more from Wikipedia on our night's residence: "According to the United States Census Bureau, the town has a total area of 4.7 square miles, all land. Clayton has an elevation of approximately 5,050 feet above sea level. It is located about 130 miles northwest of Amarillo, Texas. Clayton is considered to be in the Plains region of New Mexico."

"This region stretches to the Sangre de Cristo Mountains down to the Guadalupe Mountains. Clayton is located in the northeast corner of New Mexico, 10 miles from the border of Texas and 11 miles from the border of the Oklahoma panhandle. Clayton is also located near two parks, Clayton Lake State Park, and Capulin Volcano National Monument. Not far away is Black Mesa State Park in Oklahoma. A carbon dioxide field called Bravo Dome can be found near Clayton and stretches nearly 1 million acres."

Here's an explanation of the "Bravo Dome from OSTI: "The Bravo Dome carbon dioxide gas field is located in Union and Harding Counties of northeast New Mexico. The Bravo Dome field covers approximately 800,000 acres, but areal boundaries of the field have not been fully defined. Production in 1989 was 113 bcf of gas from 272 wells. Cumulative production at the end of 1989 was 626 bcf. Estimated recoverable reserves are more than 10 tcf. The gas is 98-99% CO{sub 2}. Most CO{sub 2} produced from Bravo Dome is used for enhanced oil recovery in the Permian basin." I read elsewhere that the dome was discovered in 1917 and was allowed to bleed CO2 into the atmosphere for a year until shut off.

CO2 is interesting, but of more interest to me is the history of the Santa Fe Trail. At one time I was researching to discover if my two times great grandfather's brother, Stephen Daley had worked as a teamster during the Mexican war and perhaps met his end in August of 1847 while freighting goods to the troops in Mexico. I was unsuccessful in that endeavor, but I still find the history of the trail to be totally fascinating.

Thankfully, Wikipedia is here to give us more history of the trail: "The route skirted the northern edge and crossed the north-western corner of Comancheria, the territory of the Comanches, who demanded compensation for granting passage to the trail, and represented another market for American traders. Comanche raiding farther south in Mexico isolated New Mexico, making it more dependent on the American trade, and provided the Comanches with a steady supply of horses for sale. By the 1840s, trail traffic along the Arkansas Valley was so heavy that bison herds could not reach important seasonal grazing land, contributing to their collapse, which in turn hastened the decline of Comanche power in the region."

"After the U.S. acquisition of the Southwest ending the Mexican war, the trail helped open the region to U.S. economic development and settlement, playing a vital role in the expansion of the U.S. into the lands it had acquired. The road route is commemorated today by the National Park Service as the Santa Fe National Historic Trail. A highway route that roughly follows the trail's path through the entire length of Kansas, the southeast corner of Colorado and northern New Mexico has been designated as the Santa Fe Trail National Scenic Byway"

So there you have it. We may be parked in a tiny plains village of no apparent significance, but in reality much history has taken place hereabouts. Though I might have found Santa Fe Trail ruts today as we rolled southwest toward Clayton, there was darn little else to photograph. I'd already shot enough milo fields yesterday, and the few corn fields we passed didn't look all that vigorous. Hence, these few photos must suffice.