The Cimarron Cutoff is the shorter route that Mr. Enders set against the Mountain Branch during the family’s journey toward Santa Fe. The choice marks the one occasion when Elinora did not get her way on the trip, and the narrator suspects that the route’s practical advantage was not the whole reason for her father’s decision.

The Route and the Choice

Elinora wanted to take the Mountain Branch to see Bent's New Fort and the trappers, Native people, and military men there. Mr. Enders refused, pointing out that the Cimarron Cutoff was a hundred miles shorter. The passage frames the Cutoff as the alternative to the route Elinora requested; it does not separately describe the route’s terrain or the family’s experience traveling it.

Significance in the Journey

The route choice stands out because Elinora’s wishes had otherwise shaped the journey: she could ask to stop for wildflowers, and her comforts were given precedence. The narrator suspects that Mr. Enders’s real reason for rejecting the Mountain Branch was that he did not want to see Uncle William. That suspicion leaves the Cutoff associated with more than distance: the stated practical reason may also have concealed a family avoidance.