The Santa Fe Trail was an important highway for more than just people and their goods. It facilitated the exchange of ideas, religions, traditions, and understandings. For generations it crossed the often blurry and overlapping lines between powerful states- the borderlands between the United States to the northeast, and in the southwest first the Spanish Empire and later independent Mexico.

This exhibit explores the Santa Fe Trail through new eyes, tracing the long history of trade and travel in this region. Discover rarely told and frequently forgotten stories of the Borderlands of Southern Colorado, from the earliest encounters between the Spanish and indigenous peoples, to the women of southwest trade, to the founding of new families and communities, and finally the transfer of territory and the shifting of borders that can still be seen on the land today.