The Santa Fe Trail

Two bronzes have given this town two names. The 1930 plaque, by the Society's own 1970 record, said Trinidad was named about 1861 for a daughter of Don Felipe Baca. The 1977 replacement dropped the daughter, and Baca with her, and gave the name to the Trinity. Neither settles it; another account credits a settler named Gutierrez with proposing the word. Baca himself is not in doubt. A farmer from near Taos, he formed the Trinidad Town Company with William Hoehne in 1866 on land he donated, and his adobe house on Main Street is now a museum.

What the plaque says

This memorial is the property of the State of Colorado The Santa Fe Trail 1840 - 1878 Two roads or forks of the Mountain Branch of the Santa Fe Trail—Bent's Old Fort to Taos and Santa Fe—joined here until the coming of the Santa Fe Railroad in 1878. The earliest permanent settlement in 1861 occurred along these roads, now Main and Commercial Streets. Trinidad, Spanish for the Trinity, inspired the name of the town which was first created as a town company in 1866, was incorporated in 1876 and received the United States patent to the townsite in 1877. The first mayor of Trinidad was Dr. Thomas E. Owen. Erected by the State Historical Society of Colorado with the Trinidad Chamber of Commerce and H. K. Holloway of Trinidad in 1930 and replaced through the Mrs. J. N. Hall Foundation in 1977

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Fishers Peak State Park — 4.1 mi
  The flat-topped landmark over Trinidad and Raton Pass, a trophy-hunting ranch until 2019 and Colorado's second-largest state park since 2020, with a summit trail since 2023.
• Ludlow Tent Colony Site — 13 mi
  The coal miners' union bought the ground, raised a granite monument over the pit in 1918, and restored it after someone knocked the heads off its figures in 2003.

More markers nearby

• Raton Pass — 12 mi