In 1848, a Canadian-born trader, Francis X. Aubry, made a bet that he could travel the trail from Santa Fe to Independence, Mo., in six days. Along the way he changed mounts often, having ridden the horses until they dropped. He tied himself to his saddle, so as not to fall off if he dozed.

Near Point of Rocks, Kan., he found the man who was supposed to provide him with fresh mounts, dead and scalped, with the horses run off. He rode another 200 miles on his already exhausted horse, until he could borrow a fresh one from a passing wagon train. Farther east in Kansas — after an exhausted mount died under him — he walked and ran more than 20 miles to Fort Mann.

Aubry won the bet and fame at both ends of the trail, having ridden and walked the route in five days and 16 hours. He also made three round trips on the trail in one year, and delivered mail relatively rapidly. But he didn't enjoy prosperity and fame into old age. In 1854, at 28, he was knifed to death on Santa Fe's Plaza.

Times have changed, but time on the trail, not so much.

Last fall, my husband, Meade, and I followed the Santa Fe Trail from Missouri to the Santa Fe Plaza. Along the way, we stopped to look for ruts left by the wagons, visit parks and museums, tour restored forts that once guarded the traders who traveled the trail, and take plenty of photographs. It took us four days.

Trade on the Santa Fe Trail was active for 60 years, from Mexican independence from Spain in 1821 to the year the railroad came to Santa Fe in 1880. Although the route was less than 1,000 miles long, typically it took traders, with loaded ox-drawn or mule-drawn wagons, about two months to traverse. The trains averaged about 15 miles a day. Each trading trip was a risk. A creek in Kansas is named after New Mexican trader Don Antonio José Chavez, who, after being caught in a snowstorm during the 1840s, was murdered by the bandit John McDaniels.

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See more photos and slideshow of the Santa Fe Trail in the photo gallery

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Most traders waited until spring to travel, but any trip could be perilous due to lack of water, violent storms and disease — in 1867, my great-great-uncle, Frank Moody, died of cholera along the trail. As the years passed, traders suffered increasing attacks from the native tribes who were being pushed out of their ancestral homes by American expansion. A St. Louis newspaper reported that in 1847, 47 Americans were killed along the way, 6,500 animals stolen and 330 wagons destroyed.

On our 2009 trip, Meade and I spent our evenings in safe and comfortable hotel rooms where I read David Dary's The Santa Fe Trail: Its History, Legends and Lore, from which I learned this information.

In spite of the dangers, trade could be enormously profitable. We ate dinner one night at the Hays Tavern in Council Grove, Kan., which was operated as a store and saloon during trail days. A sign under the old porch said that in 1857 some $40 million worth of freight went past the front door.

When William Becknell completed the first wagon trip from Franklin, Mo., to Santa Fe in 1822, he had used three farm wagons. At the end of the trail's life, traders were hauling wagons that could carry 6,000 pounds.

Until U.S. annexation of New Mexico in 1848, the international border between the United States and Mexico was at the Arkansas River.

Even today, the two ends of the trail seem like different countries. Missouri and eastern Kansas are well populated, full of sprawling suburbs and tidy small towns. The rectangular farms of central Kansas continue the orderly march of civilization. Inhabitants there have German, Scandinavian and British names.

But across the Arkansas in western Kansas and beyond, the horizons open. Towns become less symmetrical. Antelope, deer and even a few bison graze near the highway. Snowy mountains appear on the horizon. The descendants of native tribes and Mexican settlers live on the land.

Unlike a modern highway, the trail followed more than one track. Traders chose routes according to their fears of waterless camps or Indian attacks or dangerous river crossings.

In the years before the Civil War, as river boats became more sophisticated and were able to travel farther upstream on the Missouri, the eastern terminus migrated from Franklin, west to Independence, then to Westport, Mo. After the war, as new railroad track expanded west, the trail became even shorter, with the wagons taking up freight at each year's new railhead.

The trail was not only a connection between Santa Fe and Missouri. Goods of European manufacture crossed the Atlantic, were shipped up the Mississippi, to St. Louis, then on the Missouri River to the trailhead. Manufactured American items came from the East Coast on the Erie Canal, and then to St. Louis. Furs brought by trappers from the Rocky Mountains, and buffalo hides collected by native tribes, went east. American luxuries found their way south from Santa Fe along the Chihuahua trail.

Finally, transcontinental railroad replaced the lumbering wagons, teams of mules and oxen. Today, the wagon ruts are faintly visible, and only in scattered locations. But many rail lines also lie idle. The interstate highways and air corridors carry most traffic.

One morning I stood on the highway bridge near Franklin, Mo., near where Becknell started his first trip on the trail. I sent a photograph of the Missouri River to my children by iPhone. The methods of communication and transportation continue to change. What hasn't changed is the need for trade and information sharing.

Contact Robin Martin at 986-3002 or robinm@sfnewmexican.com.