Fort Riley & Junction City

The airfield's 1912 date marks an experiment: in November that year Fort Riley was the site of the first attempts in the United States to direct artillery fire from an airplane, and the participants tried a primitive radio, smoke signals and colored cards weighted with iron nuts and dropped through a stovepipe. A flying field opened on the Smoky Hill Flats in August 1921, and when its facilities were finished in 1923 it was named Marshall Field for Brig. Gen. Francis C. Marshall, the assistant chief of cavalry, killed in a plane crash the year before.

What the plaque says

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 fort in 1859. Of Fort Riley he said, "I hear that two millions of Uncle Sam's money have been expended in making these snug arrangements, and that the oats largely consumed here have often cost three dollars per bushel!" The Seventh U.S. Cavalry, which played a significant role in the campaigns against Plains Indians, organized at Fort Riley in 1866 with George A. Custer second in command. Fort Riley remained a cavalry post through World War II, after which it became an infantry training facility. At the southeast corner of the fort just north of I-70 is Marshall Army Airfield. Dating to as early as 1912, it is one of the army's oldest airports. Junction City, approximately four miles beyond, was in- corporated in 1859 and is named for its location at the junction of the Smoky Hill and Republican Rivers. The Junction City Downtown Historic District is listed in the National Register of Historic Places. Erected by the State of Kansas

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Konza Prairie Biological Station — 2.8 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 — 8.3 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.

More markers nearby

• Historical Kansas — 0.4 mi
• First Capitol of Kansas — 7.6 mi
• Fort Riley — 8.4 mi
• Historical Kansas — 15 mi