The California-Oregon Trail

The campground became a town in 1871, when Volney Baker recorded the plat of Westmoreland on April 15. Pottawatomie County's commissioners had met at Louisville since 1863, and an 1879 county seat election among Louisville, Wamego, Laclede and Westmoreland ended in a disputed canvass. A vote on September 19, 1882 settled the seat at Westmoreland; the county officers moved that month, and the commissioners' court first sat there in October. Andreas's 1883 history counted three general stores, four hotels and two churches, and mineral springs whose waters it judged highly medicinal.

What the plaque says

The California-Oregon Trail From the 1830's to the 1870's, the 2,000-mile road connecting Missouri river towns with California and Oregon was America's greatest transcontinental highway. Several routes led west from the river, converging into one trail by the time the Fort Kearny (Neb.) vicinity was reached. One of them began near present Kansas City and passed this point, crossing Rock creek not far from the highway bridge. Here a great campground was located because of the several fine springs in the vicinity. Scott spring, 180 yards north, still offers the "delicious cold water" mentioned by one traveler in 1846. Local legend says that at times the whole of what is now the Westmoreland townsite was covered by the camps of travelers, their wagons and cattle. Nearby are the graves of several pioneers who died on the trail. One unidentified grave is located just north of the spring. From a point about two miles south of this marker Kansas highway 99 follows the trail to Westmoreland. In places ruts of the old trail may still be seen from the modern traveler's car window.

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Flint Hills Discovery Center — 16 mi
  Manhattan's city-run museum of the tallgrass prairie, opened in 2012 at the edge of downtown, and the place to have the Flint Hills explained before driving into them.
• Konza Prairie Biological Station — 22 mi
  Kansas State's research prairie south of Manhattan, named for the Kanza, where every watershed burns on its own schedule and a public nature trail climbs from Kings Creek to the open hills.

More markers nearby

• Louis Vieux — 12 mi
• The Vieux Crossing — 16 mi
• St. Marys — 23 mi
• Historical Kansas — 25 mi