The Lane Trail

The trail's namesake had voted for the law that opened Kansas. James H. Lane, born in Lawrenceburg, Indiana in 1814, commanded Indiana regiments in the Mexican War and, as a congressman from Indiana from 1853 to 1855, voted for the Kansas-Nebraska Act. When Kansas entered the Union as a free state in 1861 he became one of its first United States senators. In the Civil War his Kansas Brigade killed at least nine men at Osceola, Missouri, then looted and burned the town. On July 1, 1866 he shot himself, and he died ten days later near Leavenworth.

What the plaque says

The Lane Trail Near here the towns of Plymouth and Lexington once stood as outposts on the Lane Trail, approximated today by US-75. Named for abolitionist James H. Lane, the trail was established in 1856 to bypass proslavery strongholds in Missouri and provide free-state settlers a safe route into Kansas. Rock piles known as "Lane's chimneys" marked the trail. Leaving Iowa City, settlers went west into Nebraska and south into Kansas, passing through Plymouth, Lexington, Powhattan, Netawaka, and Holton before arriving in Topeka. The trail also served as part of the underground railroad, used by John Brown and others to transport slaves north to freedom. At Plymouth, three miles south of the Nebraska line, and at Lexington, a few miles farther south, the settlers built log cabins surrounded by earthen-walled forts for protection. Armed with rifles and bolstered by a small cannon at Plymouth, the settlers established an antislavery presence that helped bring "Bleeding Kansas" into the Union as a free state. Today, however, Plymouth and Lexington exist only as a memory. Erected by Kansas Historical Society and Kansas Department of Transportation

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Indian Cave State Park — 27 mi
  Wooded Missouri River bluffs in the old Nemaha Half-Breed Reservation, with carvings of animals cut into a sandstone shelter, the ghost town of St. Deroin and miles of trail.

More markers nearby

• First Oil Well — 12 mi
• Nemaha River Falls — 14 mi
• Humboldt Commercial Historic District — 19 mi
• Missouri River — 21 mi