Fort Hays--Fort Dodge Trail

Alexander Harvey, the trader the plaque names, was a Scottish emigrant who kept a stockaded post at the trail's crossing of the Wet Walnut. He was a friend of William Bent of Bent's Fort, and his daughter Adaline married Bent when she was 20 and Bent 60. Trappers, buffalo hunters and wild horse wranglers traded at the post. The town that took his name, the oldest in Rush County, got its post office in February 1874 and by the late 1800s had a bank, hospital, newspaper and Santa Fe depot. Fifty-four people lived there in 2020.

What the plaque says

Fort Hays--Fort Dodge Trail Established in 1867, the Fort Hays--Fort Dodge Trail, which passed near this spot, was first used by the military and some civilian traffic in 1868. The following year Alexander Harvey, a former member of the Sixth Cavalry, built a trading post on the trail on the north bank of Walnut Creek near here, and provided a place to ford the creek. A few years later, the town of Alexander was founded nearby, taking its name from Alexander Harvey, the original owner of the trading post. The bulk of the military usage of the Fort Hays--Fort Dodge Trail was over when the Santa Fe Railroad reached Dodge City in 1872. However, it continued to be used for several more years regularly by civilian traffic--hunters, freighters, traders, and settlers.

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Fort Larned National Historic Site — 27 mi
  Nine sandstone buildings of 1866-68 on the Pawnee Fork, a post that guarded the Santa Fe Trail and served as the agency where the Plains nations came for the annuities promised at Medicine Lodge.
• Santa Fe Trail Center — 30 mi
  Pawnee County's museum and archive two miles west of Larned, ten buildings on ten acres that carry the story from the trail years into the town that grew up beside Fort Larned.

More markers nearby

• Discoverer of Pluto — 19 mi
• Birthplace of Farm Credit — 32 mi