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....
WHEN CORONADO CAME TO KANSAS Francisco Vasquez de Coronado, with 36 soldiers and Father Juan de Padilla, marched north from the Rio Grande valley in the spring of 1541. Coronado's objective...
FOOL CHIEFS VILLAGE The Kansa, for whom the state is named, once occupied 20 million acres of land in eastern and northern Kansas. In 1825 the U.S. government reduced the lands to a reservation...
THE GEOGRAPHIC CENTER In a park three miles north and one mile west is the exact geographic center of the 48 contiguous states. The location has been officially established by the U.S....
CHISHOLM TRAIL IN SUMNER COUNTY The Chisholm Trail probably began as a buffalo migration route, linking summer pastures in the Central Plains to winter pastures in Texas. American Indians followed...
HISTORICAL KANSAS When Kansas territory was opened for white settlement on May 30, 1854, a bitter contest developed over the slavery question. Established the following December, Topeka, 25 miles...
FORT WALLACE First called Camp Pond Creek, Fort Wallace was established in 1865. The fort served as the headquarters for troops given the task of protecting travelers headed west along the...
BUTTERFIELD STAGE LINE When the Kansas Territory was created in 1854, it stretched all the way to the Rocky Mountains. The current state boundary, a few miles west of here, took effect in 1861...
HOLLENBERG RANCH AND THE PONY EXPRESS Begun in 1858, the Hollenberg Ranch, four miles north and one mile east of here, served as a stop on the Oregon-California Trail until the late 1860s. Gerat...
OPENING OF THE MID-CONTINENT OIL FIELD Kansas has long been oil country. There are legends that Indians held council around the lights of burning springs. Emigrants, it is known, skimmed...