First Capitol of Kansas

The building was not ready when the legislators came. Governor Andrew Reeder had named Pawnee in April 1855, and when the session opened the floorboards were not nailed down, doors and windows were missing and the roof was unfinished. Builders worked through the Sunday before, and one lawmaker said no good law could be enacted within walls that had witnessed such desecration. A windstorm tore off the roof in 1877. The Union Pacific, which put more than $20,000 into the restoration, traced its own beginning to this legislature's charter for the Leavenworth, Pawnee and Western railroad.

What the plaque says

First Capitol of Kansas This building was erected in 1855 in the now extinct town of Pawnee for the first legislature of the territory of Kansas. The members were mostly Missourians, fraud- ulently elected in an effort to make Kansas a slave state. They came in wagons and on horseback, well armed, and camped out on the prairie. The session lasted from July 2 to 6. The Missourians were determined to legislate nearer home and passed a bill to move to Shawnee Meth- odist Mission near Kansas City. Governor Reeder vetoed the bill, it was passed over his veto, and this ended the session here. All other acts, including the so-called Bogus Laws, were passed at Shawnee Mission. This building stood in partial ruin until its restoration in 1928 by the Union Pacific railroad. Erected by Kansas Historical Society and State Highway Commission

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Konza Prairie Biological Station — 8.4 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.
• Flint Hills Discovery Center — 13 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.
• Eisenhower Presidential Library, Museum and Boyhood Home — 27 mi
  The six-room house on Southeast Fourth Street where David and Ida Eisenhower raised six sons, and the library, museum and chapel that grew up around it in south Abilene.

More markers nearby

• Fort Riley — 1.2 mi
• Fort Riley & Junction City — 7.6 mi
• Historical Kansas — 8.1 mi
• Historical Kansas — 8.6 mi