An introduction to Missouri's chunk of Santa Fe Trail, providing an account of the trail's historical and cultural significance. It tells how the route evolved, stitched together from Indian paths, trappers' traces, and wagon roads, and how the experience of traveling the Santa Fe Trail varied even within Missouri.

Mary Collins Barile, a playwright, author, and historian, has written about American cookbooks, the Hudson River and Catskill Mountains, Mark Twain, the Santa Fe Trail, and frontier theater in America. She is currently working on a film documentary about nineteenth-century actress Maude Adams. Mary lives in Boonville, Missouri. She works at the Center for the Arts and Humanities at the University of Missouri.