The Santa Fé Trail, where the forthcoming clash between the North and the South would likely emerge, could not have been more unaccommodating. It was so narrow in some places that a wagon had to be unhitched to turn it around. Nowhere in the Civil War did Mother Nature provide a less fitting area for a fight than at Gloriéta Pass. Yet the southern end of the Sangré de Cristo Mountain Range provided the arena for this major encounter between the First Colorado Regiment and Sibley’s Texas Brigade.
In the solid, rock-walled Apache canyon, the two opposing commanders felt boxed in like in a casket. Neither Colonel Slough nor Colonel Scurry was quite prepared to fight on a battlefield without a field. Gloriéta Pass was a far cry from the openness of a Gettysburg, where soldiers lined up and shot at each other in wide-open farm lands.
Nonetheless, both the Southern and Northern armies embarked on the 12-mile stretch of the Trail between Johnson’s Ranch and Kozlowski’s Ranch, knowing that somewhere along the way, they would inevitably lock horns. A narrow and serene mountain pass awaited their encroachment.
