The first wagons to cross the plains from Missouri to New Mexico
were part of William Becknell's 1822 Santa Fe trading expedition.
The year previous, Becknell and five companions had been the first
American traders to penetrate the newly independent Mexican nation.
The handsome profits realized on that venture were the driving
force behind the considerably more ambitious second expedition,
which set out for Santa Fe within nine months of the first.
According to Becknell's now-famous "journal," first published in
the pages of the Missouri lntelligencer in 1823, his 1822 company
consisted of "21 men, with three waggons. "1 It appears that only
one of the wagons belonged to the expedition's leader, however.2
This wagon, it was later reported, had cost $150 in Missouri and
was sold by Becknell in New Mexico for $700.3 The other wagons were
probably disposed of in a like manner; they do not seem to have
returned to Missouri. What these wagons looked like, their hauling
capacities, and where they were made and by whom- all this is
unknown. Their importance, however, is unquestioned. They proved
that merchandise laden wagons could navigate the 800-plus miles
between Franklin, Missouri, and Santa Fe--a remarkable feat that
did not go unnoticed. No wagons were reported on the Santa Fe Trail
in 1823, but the 1824 caravan contained an amazing assemblage of
vehicles. Meredith Miles Marmaduke, a member of this company,
recorded in his diary on May 24 that they traveled with "2 road
waggons, 20 dearborns, 2 carts and one small piece of cannon. "4
Augustus Storrs, another member of the expedition, wrote some
months later that there had been "twenty-three four-wheeled
vehicles, one of which was a common road wagon. "5 Although
Marmaduke and Storrs do not agree on the number of vehicles in the
caravan, it is important to note their use of the term "road
wagon." According to transportation historian Don Berkebile, in his
Carriage Terminology: An Historical Dictionary, the term has two
definitions. One describes a vehicle also known as a buggy. The
term was "also loosely applied," Berkebile tells us, "to larger
WAGONS that were employed in the movement of materials or
merchandise over the roads. "6 The second definition is probably
the one intended by Marmaduke and Storrs; Santa Fe trader and
historian Josiah Gregg uses "road-wagon" in his Commerce of the
Prairies (1844) to denote freight wagons.7 Although the term leaves
us to speculate on the appearance of these vehicles, it is possible
that the road wagons in the 1824 caravan were the first actual
freight wagons to travel the Santa Fe Trail.8
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