Santa Fe Trail

Using material culture and art objects from the museum’s collection this exhibition will recognize the bicentennial of this most important National Heritage Trail and explore its role in connecting Mexico with the United States, its place in the Texas Revolution and the Mexican War and how these events shaped the history of the American West from Central America to western Canada. After opening trade between Missouri and Santa Fe, Nuevo Mexico, the Santa Fe Trail became a superhighway carrying goods both ways and directly affecting cultures in both countries, especially with Native peoples in the territories west of Missouri.