A Drive Through Time Along the Cherokee Trail

Fountain Creek, near Pinon, Colorado, along the old Cherokee Trail, with Pikes Peak in the background. This location is near Independence Camp and the early Benesch Ranch. June 2026.

One of the greatest joys of historical research is finding someone who knows the land as well as the records. Recently, I had the privilege of spending a day with a new friend, Nancy Prince, whose roots run deep in Pueblo County. Her family descends from early Czech immigrants who settled along Fountain Creek, and she possesses something no book or archive can fully capture: a lifetime of knowledge about the places where history happened.

Our destination was Overton Road, a quiet country road that follows a portion of the old Cherokee Trail from the northern boundary of Pueblo County southward through the old neighborhoods to the confluence of Fountain Creek and the Arkansas River. To most travelers, it might appear to be just another rural road. To those who know its story, it is a corridor through Colorado's earliest history.

As we drove south, the landscape unfolded like chapters in a book. At one stop, she pointed out the probable location of an 1859 campsite named Independence, where travelers paused on their journeys across the frontier. It was easy to imagine wagon wheels, campfires, and conversations carried on the prairie wind.

This is the same general location as the early 1860s homestead of Nancy's immigrant ancestors, Joseph Benesch and Julia Schlessinger. These were the years when settlers began transforming the landscape from a place of passage into a place of permanent homes and communities. The homestead represented the courage and determination required to build a life along the creek when supplies, neighbors, and security were often miles away. 

At the end of our route stood a marker identifying the site of an 1853 ranch and the former settlement of Fountain City. Located on the east side of Fountain Creek, Fountain City developed as an early ranching and farming community. Across the creek stood El Pueblo, the famous trading post established in 1842. Together, the two settlements occupied one of the most important crossroads in early Colorado history, where trails, rivers, traders, and settlers converged.

What struck me most throughout the day was how much history remains hidden in plain sight. We often think of history as something preserved in museums, libraries, and archives. Yet many of the most important events occurred in places that today are marked by little more than a field, a bend in the road, or a stand of trees. Without someone to tell their stories, those places become invisible.

My friend served as both guide and storyteller, helping me see the land through the eyes of those who came before us. Every stop revealed another layer of the region's past. What might have looked like an ordinary stretch of countryside became a living timeline connecting Native travelers, traders, settlers, immigrants, and the communities that eventually grew around them.

As genealogists and historians, we spend countless hours studying documents. Those records are invaluable, but there is something equally powerful about standing where history happened. Seeing the terrain, tracing the routes people traveled, and understanding the distances they crossed adds dimensions that cannot be found on a census page or land record.

By the end of the day, I realized that I had experienced more than a field trip. I had traveled through nearly a century of Colorado history along a single road. Overton Road reminded me that the past is not as distant as we sometimes imagine. It is still there, waiting quietly beside the road for someone willing to stop, look, and listen. The Cherokee Trail may no longer carry wagon trains, but for those willing to explore its path, it still carries stories.