No, the song is not about that experience. Some fifty-three different forced marches occurred between August 1864 and the end of 1866. In this dark and tragic page in American history, Navajos were forced to walk up to thirteen miles a day at gunpoint from their reservation in what is now Arizona to eastern New Mexico. I even had hopes that the Navajo Trail in the song referred to the “Long Walk of the Navajo,” also called the “Long Walk to Bosque Redondo.” This walk, like the “Trail of Tears” of the Cherokee, Muscogee (Creek), Seminole, Chickasaw, and Choctaw nations, refers to the 1864 deportation and attempted ethnic cleansing of the Navajo people by the United States government. Even with its name, I do not believe that this trail has anything to do with the Navajos. This trail requires hikers to descend eight hundred feet down the side of the Bryce rim, and then at the end of the hike to climb right back up that slope. I was hoping that there was something more, but the only “Navajo Trail” that I could find was a trail in Bryce Canyon National Park, Utah, named the Navajo Loop Trail. That is to say, the Navajo Trail only exists in the imagination of the songwriter. So, right or wrong, I have come to the conclusion that this “trail” is comparable to the “trail of the lonesome pine” of 1913, or the “happy trails” of the 1940s. Their song, Happy Trails, written by Dale Evans Rogers, was the theme song for the 1940s and 1950s radio program and the 1950s television show starring Roy Rogers and Dale Evans Rogers, always sung over the end credits of the program.īut having said all that, I am still at a loss to locate the Navajo Trail. Where she carved her name and I carved mine Īnd in keeping with the “trails” theme that I seem to have started, there are the “Trails” about which Roy Rogers and Dale Evans sing. In the pale moonshine our hearts entwine, The song is not really a about a trail at all, but about the singer’s love for his girl, June, who lives in the Blue Ridge Mountains of Virginia. A song by Al Dubin, Edwina Coolidge, and Will Grosz tells of the Santa Fe Trail.Ī song written by Ballard MacDonald and Harry Carroll in 1913 speaks of The Trail Of The Lonesome Pine. This trail served as a vital commercial and military highway until the introduction of the railroad to Santa Fe in 1880. Yet another trail I knew about was the Santa Fe Trail, a nineteenth-century transportation route through central North America that connected Franklin, Missouri with Santa Fe, New Mexico. Based on an English lyrical song that dates back to 1640, The Old Chisholm Trail was modified into a cowboy song. A song was written about the old Chisholm Trail that dates back to the 1870s when it was among the most popular songs sung by cowboys during that era. Ellsworth, Kansas, was also considered a major influence of the trail. From 1883 to 1887, the end of the trail was Caldwell, Kansas. Later, Newton, Kansas, and Wichita, Kansas, each served as the end of the trail. From 1867 to 1871, the trail ended in Abilene, Kansas. I also knew that the old Chisholm Trail is believed to have started at Donna, Texas or at San Antonio, Texas. The western half of the trail spanned most of the future states of Idaho and Oregon. The eastern part of the Oregon Trail spanned part of the future state of Kansas and nearly all of what are now the states of Nebraska and Wyoming. I knew, for instance, that the Oregon Trail was a two thousand-mile historic east-west wagon route and emigrant trail that connected the Missouri River to valleys in Oregon. I knew about the Santa Fe Trail, the Oregon Trail, even the old Chisholm Trail, but where was the Navajo Trail? There were other trails that I could find. As I was researching the song, Along The Navajo Trail, I began to wonder just where the Navajo Trail was located.
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