Note 137 — MEMORANDOM OF THE VOIGE BY LAND FROM FORT SMITH TO THE ROCKEY MOUNTAINS. (continued 2)

Chaquaqua creek, a large branch of Purgatory river, draining N. from Chico Rico Mesa. Crossing this mesa in the direction said, Fowler passes at 37° the line between New Mexico and Colorado at the same place that the Denver, Texas, and Ft. Worth R. R. does now—about long. 103° 53´ W.—and comes down off the mesa about 5 m. due E. of Watervale, Las Animas Co., Col. He keeps down the creek some 10 m. and camps on it, about opposite the westernmost point of the Mesa de Maya.

From this point Fowler makes a break, almost as straight as the crow flies, for the Arkansaw, which he will strike at Coolidge, Kas. It is a long distance across country, about N. E., with no exactly identifiable landmark till we stand him on Two Buttes; and his trail does not coincide, except approximately, with any road I can find laid down on the best modern maps. The nearest I know of is what is called the “probable course” of the wagon road from Cimarron to Granada, on the drainage sheet of Hayden’s Atlas of Colorado, 1877; but the maps I go by are the later ones of the U. S. Geological Survey, 2 m. to the inch. It is a matter of special interest to recover this old trail as closely as possible.