At this location on the Old Spanish Trail you are standing at the midpoint of the infamous jornada el muerte or journey of death. Many travelers regarded the parched landscape as the most difficult stretch of the entire journey. This 55 mile stretch began at Muddy River near Glendale and ended at Las Vegas Springs. It was the longest, driest stretch of the entire trail.
In 1844, John C. Fremont and his party traveled north from Las Vegas Springs. He wrote about it in his journal. “We crossed a gap in the surrounding ridge and the appearance of skeletons of horses very soon warned that we were engaged in another dry jornada, which proved to be the longest we had in all our jounrey — between fifty and sixty miles without a drop of water… Hourly expecting to find water, we continued to press on until towards midnight, when, after a hard and uninterrupted march of sixteen hours, our wild mules began running ahead; and in a mile or two we came to a bold running stream…”
