Susan Shelby Magoffin (30 July 1827 – 26 October 1855) was the wife of a trader from the United States who traveled on the Santa Fe Trail in the late 1840s.

Samuel and his brother James Wiley Magoffin had been active in the Santa Fe trade since the 1820s, travelling widely in the United States and Mexico and gaining considerable wealth.

[1] Susan Magoffin shared the common Anglo-American prejudices of the time about Native Americans and Mexicans, at first assuming they were primitive and brutish, but was quick to adapt her views as she came to know them better.

[2] Thus she was astonished that an Indian woman who gave birth to a healthy child then went to the river half an hour later to bathe herself and her baby, and repeated this practice each day.

"[6] When she reached El Paso del Norte, Susan was greatly impressed with the civilized manners and learning of her Mexican hosts.

"[9] She witnessed a burial on the plains, and was impressed by the great pains taken to protect the body from wolves with a deep grave covered in stones and the earth tamped down by cattle.

[2] The army under General Stephen W. Kearny had entered Santa Fe on 15 August 1846 without opposition, since the Mexican governor Manuel Armijo had told his soldiers not to fight.

[2] She described Doña Gertrudes Barcelo as "the principal monte-bank[a] keeper in Santa Fé, a stately dame of a certain age, the possessor of a portion of that shrewd sense and fascinating manner necessary to allure the wayward, inexperienced youth to the hall of final ruin.

"[15] Visitors to Bent's Fort today can visit Susan's Room located on the upper level in the Northeast corner of the building.

It attracted my attention particularly the evening I came, with the same ease of a lady much accustomed to society, she entered the room, with a polite bow and 'Bonus tardes',[b] shook hands with me and seated herself.

"[18] The Magoffins continued south in the wake of Colonel Doniphan's army, with Susan's health deteriorating due to the rigors of travel.

[2] The actress Linda Marsh was cast as the historical Susan Shelby Magoffin in the 1965 episode, "No Place for a Lady", on the syndicated television anthology series, Death Valley Days.

Simon Scott played Magoffin's husband, Samuel, and host Ronald W. Reagan was cast as frontiersman William Bent.