Susan Shelby Magoffin

Only 18 years old when she traveled the Santa Fe Trail in 1846, Susan Shelby Magoffin was one of the first American women to travel the trail and she also kept one of the most detailed journals of daily experience on the trail. The young woman had just married Samuel Magoffin, who was an experience Santa Fe Trail trader, when her journey began on June 10, 1846 from Independence, Missouri. After suffering the trials of life on the trail, the Magoffins moved to St. Louis, Missouri, and Susan died there in 1855 shortly after the birth of her second daughter.

Susan Magoffin wrote:

Oh, this is a life I would not exchange for a good deal? There is such independence, so much free uncontaminated air, which impregnates the mind, the feelings, nay every thought, with purity. I breathe free without that oppression and uneasiness felt in the gossiping groups of a settled home. (From her diary on the Santa Fe Trail, 1846-1847.)