Kit Carson

The town is named for a man who never saw it. Christopher Carson died at Fort Lyon in May 1868, and the Kansas Pacific's railhead of tents and dugouts that took his name went up in 1869 on Sand Creek, three miles west of here; the tracks reached it in March 1870. As the end of track and a cattle-shipping point it boomed to about 1,500 people, and town and line moved to this site in 1882. The bronze stands at the 1904 depot, saved from demolition in 1969 by the local historical society as its museum.

What the plaque says

This tablet is the property of the State of Colorado Kit Carson Named for the great western scout, guide, trapper, and Indian fighter. Located on famous trails - at the junction of the Smoky Hill stagecoach route and the Texas-Montana, Potter and Bacon, and Chisum cattle trails. On the old Kansas Pacific Railroad, at junction of branches running to Denver and to Las Animas. Erected by the State Historical Society of Colorado from the Mrs. J.N. Hall Foundation and by the Chamber of Commerce of Kit Carson. 1954

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Sand Creek Massacre National Historic Site — 21 mi
  Lost even to the survivors' descendants for more than a century, and found again in 1999 by tribal oral history, archives and a metal detector working together.

More markers nearby

• Old Cattle Trail — 12 mi
• Colorado — 24 mi