Santa Fe Trail Historical Park

Santa Fe Trail Historical Park, also called Pioneer Park, is located on the bank of the Rio Hondo River in El Monte, California.

By the 1850s, those in El Monte started to call the town the `End of the Santa Fe Trail."

The City of El Monte held a ceremony to dedicate the Santa Fe Trail Historical Park on June 2, 1989.

The park is on the west side of Santa Anita Avenue, just a few blocks north of the Interstate 10 in California freeway and south of the El Monte City Hall.

The El Monte Historical Museum at 3150 Tyler Avenue showcases the Santa Fe Trail and El Monte's Historical importance to Southern California.

Oldest home in El Monte at the end of the Santa Fe Trail built in 1849, (photo from 1922)
The route of the Old Spanish Trail
The route of the Old Spanish Trail
Santa Fe Trail highway sign in Cimarron, New Mexico
Connections along the Santa Fe Railroad, showing the principal regular stops on the AT&SF mainline, including cattle drive destinations such as Dodge City . It is no accident that most of those Kansas, Colorado, and New Mexican towns were also first serviced by the Santa Fe Trail.
Arrival of the caravan at Santa Fe, lithograph published c. 1844