Fort Zarah

The fort carries the name of a general's son. Samuel R. Curtis named the post for Major H. Zarah Curtis, one of about 90 Union soldiers killed when Quantrill's men, disguised as Union troops, struck at Baxter Springs on October 6, 1863. A town called Zarah grew up beside the fort with a hotel, two saloons, a blacksmith shop, a livery stable, a general store and a post office, and several thousand Texas cattle were wintered there. Its last citizen left in 1875; the townsite, three miles east of Great Bend, is a wheat field.

What the plaque says

Fort Zarah To protect commerce on the Santa Fe Trail, the U.S. government established a line of forts from Fort Leavenworth to Fort Dodge. Fort Zarah, built here along Walnut Creek in 1863, was initially made of dugouts and tents. The fort's two-story octagonal blockhouse was built in 1865 with stone quarried from nearby bluffs. The fort was abandoned in April 1866 then reopened two months later. Fort Zarah hosted a council with Plains tribes in November 1866 as the U.S. continued to secure lands from the Indians. That year had seen fewer battles, but more conflicts would occur the year after the council. "We made peace on the North Fork of the Platte. We have kept it. Every time we meet the whites in council, they have new men to talk to us. They have new roads to open. We do not like it." —Woqini, or Roman Nose, Cheyenne Warrior Society, 1866 With trail traffic shifting to rail traffic, the fort was no longer needed and closed in December 1869. Erected by the State of Kansas

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Barton County Historical Society Museum and Village — 2.9 mi
  A village of buildings brought in from around Barton County to a lot on US-281 just south of Great Bend, from an 1898 limestone church to a steel Lustron house of 1950.
• Cheyenne Bottoms and the Kansas Wetlands Education Center — 6.9 mi
  A 41,000-acre natural sink northeast of Great Bend, diked into shallow pools where a large share of the continent's migrating shorebirds stop to feed on the mudflats each spring and fall.
• Ellinwood Underground — 7.2 mi
  The basement storefronts under the sidewalks of an 1880s German railroad town on US-56, where a harness maker padlocked his shop in 1920 and left everything behind.
• Quivira National Wildlife Refuge — 24 mi
  A rare inland salt marsh on Rattlesnake Creek, fed by salty groundwater, where whooping cranes stop on migration and the refuge's senior water right keeps coming up short.

More markers nearby

• Pawnee Rock — 16 mi
• The Land of Quivira — 24 mi
• Birthplace of Farm Credit — 26 mi