FORT DODGE-CAMP SUPPLY MILITARY ROAD The Fort Dodge Camp Supply Military Road passed several hundred feet west of this marker. The route was established in 1868 during General Phillip...
THE ROAD TO SANTA FE The Santa Fe trail, extending 750 miles from the Kansas City area to the old Spanish settlement of Santa Fe, was the great overland trade route of the 1820's to 1870s....
FORT RILEY JUNCTION CITY Approximately 7 miles ahead is the southern edge of Fort Riley, established as a military post in 1853. Horace Greeley, noted editor of the New York Tribune, visited the...
HISTORICAL KANSAS Abilene, 20 miles ahead, was a cowtown of major importance in the history of the American West. During 1867-1871 much of the town was a mixture of bawling Longhorn cattle...
HISTORICAL KANSAS Five miles to the northeast the Republican and Smoky Hill rivers unite to form the Kansas or Kaw. At the junction, the city which bears the name, was founded in 1857. Before...
NICODEMUS Nicodemus, established in 1877, was one of several African American settlements in Kansas. The 350 settlers came from Kentucky to escape the problems of the oppression of the “Jim...
FRONTIER IN LINCOLN COUNTY The 1860s brought ever- growing numbers of travelers and settlers into Indian lands in Kansas. Taking advantage of tribal divisions, the U.S. government negotiated...
CHOUTEAUS ISLAND In the spring of 1816 Auguste P. Chouteau's hunting party traveling east with a winter's catch of furs was attacked near the Arkansas river by 200 Pawnees. Retreating to what was...
BIRTHPLACE OF FARM CREDIT This 280 acres was collateral for the nation's first Federal Land Bank loan made on April 10, 1917 to farmer- stockman A. L. Stockwell. In those days, farmers and...
CAMP CRILEY 1872 Camp Criley was established in 1872 as a supply station for workmen building the Santa Fe Railroad, name changed to Garfield in 1873 by pioneers settling here. This park...
DISCOVERER OF PLUTO Burdett is the boyhood home of Dr. Clyde Tombaugh, discoverer of the planet Pluto. Born in Illinois in 1906, he grew up on a farm northwest of here and was graduated...
THE CALIFORNIA-OREGON TRAIL From the 1830s to the 1870s, the 2,000-mile road connecting Missouri river towns with California and Oregon was America's greatest transcontinental highway. Several...
LOUIS VIEUX Of Pottawatomie Indian and French ancestry, Louis Vieux was an early resident of this area. Probably born near Lake Michigan, Vieux, with a portion of the Pottawatomies, moved to Iowa...
ST MARYS This city and college take their name from St. Mary's Catholic Mission founded here by the Jesuits in 1848 for the Pottawatomie Indians. These missionaries, who had lived with the...
THE VIEUX CROSSING A few miles to the northwest, the Oregon-California trail crossed the Vermillion Creek heading toward the Pacific from the 'jumping off' towns on the Missouri River. The...
COUNTRY OF THE PAWNEES For many centuries this region was the homeland of the Republic band (Kitkahahakis) of Pawnees. A numerous and prosperous people, the Pawnees dominated the north central...
PAWNEE INDIAN VILLAGE MUSEUM This is the site of a large, fortified village of the Republican band of Pawnee Indians, occupied during the early 1800s. As the inscription on the stone marker...
THE CHISHOLM TRAIL At the close of the Civil War when millions of longhorns were left on the plains of Texas without a market, the Union Pacific was building west across Kansas. Joseph McCoy,...
INDIAN TREATIES OF 1865 Hundreds of Cheyennes, Arapahos, Kiowas, Apaches, and Comanches camped not far from here in 1865 to negotiate peace with the U.S. government. Both sides at the...
FARGO SPRINGS AND SPRINGFIELD The importance of railroads to the early settlement and prosperity of the West is nowhere better illustrated than in the stories of two Seward county towns....