Santa Fe Trail Days

Santa Fe Trail Days fills downtown Trinidad with carnival rides, food stands, and booths of vendors and arts and crafts. In 2026 the festival took over Animas Street, Purgatoire Drive and Modica Drive. The organizers’ listing gave its address as 135 North Animas Street, Trinidad’s City Hall, and ran it from 3:00 p.m. on June 26 to 4:00 p.m. on June 28. “Bring your friends. Bring your lawn chairs. Bring your festival spirit,” the listing from Visit Trinidad Colorado, the town’s tourism office, told visitors. Sponsors paid for all the entertainment, so none of it carried a charge. No outside alcohol, weapons or pets were allowed, and bags were subject to search.

The 2026 lineup on Animas Street

The music on the 2026 bill came from the Cappellucci Brothers, Guild of Ages, and Robert & The Jammin Trio, and Nathaniel Krantz played live on Saturday night. A comedy hypnotist and Native American dancers filled the hours between sets. A 5K color run and an e-bike ride used the streets, and the City of Trinidad’s own account of the plans added an outdoor live theater performance.

Sources disagree on how long the 2026 festival lasted. The tourism office’s listing gave three days, June 26 through 28. The city, writing in the Colorado Municipal League newsletter of April 14, 2026, gave June 25 through 28. On June 25, 2026, the World Journal of Walsenburg ran the headline “Santa Fe Trail Days expands to four-day festival.” Its reporter, David J. Santistevan Jr., wrote: “Trinidad: get ready for a bigger, badder, and bolder Santa Fe Trails event, the likes we have not seen in a very long time.” No date has been announced for the next edition.

A drone show for two anniversaries

The State of Colorado chose Trinidad as one of the cities to hold an America 250/Colorado 150 drone show, and the city set it on the 2026 festival program. Trinidad was also marking its own 150th anniversary that year. A local artist drew a logo for the occasion, the city bought commemorative coins and pins, and it drew up a year of city-sponsored events. That calendar ran from a February 1 community luncheon, attended by four past mayors and the current one, to a casino night on December 31. Santa Fe Trail Days was on it. In the city’s own description, Trinidad has stood “for a century and a half” as “a gateway to southern Colorado.”

In September the tourism office announced a drone show for America’s 250th birthday and the 150th of Colorado and Trinidad. It was “officially RESCHEDULED for September 25th at dusk” and moved to Cimino Park, with Modica Drive blocked off beside the park. Spectators were told to bring lawn chairs and to scan a QR code for the music that went with the show. The posts do not say what date it had been moved from.

Car show and mechanical bull: an earlier June

The city counted 2026 as the festival’s third consecutive year. An undated city page describes an earlier edition held Friday, June 7, and Saturday, June 8, from 10:00 a.m. to 10:00 p.m. on West Main, Animas and Church streets. That year the program had the Purgatory River Car and Bike Show, a water slide, a rock climbing wall, a mechanical bull, a trackless train, gyroscope balls, a pedal cart course, games, crafts, food vendors and a light show. Turning Point played Friday evening. On Saturday, Robert Valdez and the Jammin Trio played from noon to three and Wiskey Creek from three to six. The headliner, Al Hurricane Jr. featuring Tiny Morrie, closed the night from six to ten.

Becknell’s road to Santa Fe

The festival takes its name from the Santa Fe Trail, which the National Park Service describes as primarily a commercial highway between Missouri and Santa Fe, New Mexico, from 1821 to 1880. Missouri trader William Becknell pioneered it when he left Franklin, Missouri, in September 1821. Traders before him had been arrested by Spanish soldiers near Santa Fe, and most had been hauled south toward Mexico City to serve long prison sentences. Becknell found that Mexico had overthrown Spanish rule and that its new government welcomed outside trade. Others followed him, and by 1825 Missouri goods were being sold in Santa Fe and at points farther south.

Traders had two routes to choose from. The Mountain Route had more dependable water but required an arduous crossing of Raton Pass. Most traders took the Cimarron Route, which was shorter and faster but required knowing where its scarce water lay. For the trail’s first twenty-five years, Mexican and American traders both used it. Then in 1846 America’s Army of the West followed it to invade Mexico during the Mexican-American War. After the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo in 1848, it became a national road carrying freight to southwestern forts, along with stagecoaches, gold seekers bound for California and Colorado, missionaries and emigrants.

Railroads crossed Kansas after 1866. The Atchison, Topeka, and Santa Fe Railroad reached the top of Raton Pass in late 1878, and in February 1880 it reached Santa Fe. In the Park Service’s words, “the trail faded into history.”