Madonna of the Trail

WIFE AND MOTHER, COOK AND COMPANION, DROVER AND SENTRY, NURSE AND ADVISOR... THE MADONNA OF THE TRAIL

The Madonna of the Trail... To the honor and glory of the Great Motherhood of the past I stand-a sacred shrine. May all who pass within the Shadow of my form, pause Awhile, and understand the faith, The ideals, and the real inner Beauty of the soul of these Mothers Of old, as they passed down the Great homing trail of the nation. -Mrs. John Trigg Moss She stands ten feet high, clothed in the rough dress of the frontier. A sunbonnet shades her face. One hand grips the barrel of a rifle as a baby lies confidently in the crook of her arm and a small boy clings to her skirts.... She is the Madonna of the Trail, one of twelve identical monuments dedicated six decades ago to the women who carried the hopes and dreams of civilization with them as they journeyed westward with their families into a harsh and unknown land on routes blazed by General Edward Braddock, Daniel Boone, Colonel Thomas Cresap, Jedediah Smith, Dr. Thomas Walker, and other pathfinders. The story of the Madonnas begins in 1922 with Mrs. John Trigg Moss of the Daughters of the American Revolution and Harry Truman, then a county judge in Missouri. The two joined forces to petition Congress for official designation of a road commemorating famous pioneer trails. In due course, the idea was endorsed by President Calvin Coolidge, and the National Old Trails Road became a reality. In its winding path across the country, the commemorative highway links Braddock's Road, the Cumberland Road (or National Pike), Boone's Lick Road, the Santa Fe Trail, and the route blazed by mountain man Jed Smith through presentday Arizona and on to the Pacific Coast. But the DAR wanted to accomplish something more, to create a monument that would capture the spirit of the pio neering women who boldly left the comforts of eastern hearth and home to trek into the wilderness. Out of this resolve grew the idea to place twelve identical statues at key points along the Old Trails Road. The basic design concept for the Madonna was derived from a statue of Sacajawea, the Shoshone Indian woman who guided Lewis and Clark. Sketches were given to sculptor August Leimbach of St. Louis, who cast the monuments in algonite. The conglomerate of crushed Missouri granite, marble, cement, and screenings of lead ore gives the figures a warm, soft, lifelike color. Today the monuments look out over historically significant points in Maryland, Pennsylvania, West Virginia, Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, Missouri, Kansas, Colorado, New Mexico, Arizona, and California. Each of the women stands atop a sixfoot-high pedestal, on the face of which is inscribed, in part, "Madonna of the Trail... Memorial to the Pioneer Mothers of the Covered Wagon Days." On the back appear the words "The National Old Trails Road." The other two sides contain in each case either historical information or a local commemoration. The monument at Springfield, Ohio, was the first to be dedicated, in ceremonies held July 4, 1928. Within nine months, the other eleven were unveiled. In Arizona, as in the other states selected, DAR chapters vied for the honor of placing the statue in their general areas. But the Flagstaff chapter was first to raise enough money to cover the cost of shipping and erecting the monument. The spot chosen for Arizona's Madonna was on U.S. Route 60 in Springerville, in the high plateau country near the eastern border of the state. On the base of the Springerville statue is the inscription: "A tribute to the pioneers of Arizona and the Southwest who trod this ground and braved the dangers of the Apache and other warrior tribes." Last of the dedication ceremonies occurred on April 19, 1929, at a place where many pioneers spent their first night on the way west: the head of the Cumberland Road in modern-day Bethesda, Maryland, marking the first section of the National Old Trails Road. Today the Madonnas of the Trail, their faces softened by sixty years of weathering, continue to testify to the fortitude shown by America's pioneer mothers as they helped forge a nation-from sea to shining sea.

Dauntless figure of the Madonna of the Trail at Springerville peers out over historic bigh country little changed from the days of the Spanish explorers. DALE SCHICKETANZ

MADONNA OF THE TRAIL N·S·D·A·R· MEMORIAL TO THE PIONEER MOTHERS OF THE COVERED WAGON DAYS