Louis Vieux

The town three miles west may carry Vieux's first name. Andreas's History of the State of Kansas of 1883 says Robert Wilson pre-empted Louisville, kept a frontier hotel at the military crossing of Rock Creek, and that the town was named for his son Louis. Other accounts say it was named for both Louis Wilson and Louis Vieux. The Louis Vieux Elm, across the river and estimated at more than 300 years old, kept his name too; its stump was destroyed by fire in August 2011.

What the plaque says

Of Pottawatomie Indian and French ancestry, Louis Vieux was an early resident of this area. Probably born near Lake Michigan, Vieux, with a portion of the Pottawatomies, moved to Iowa and later Indianola, Kan., near Topeka. In 1847 or 1848, Vieux moved to this area of what became Pottawatomie county, located on the Oregon Trail near the Vermillion river crossing. The Vieux family, with its seven children, lived in a log cabin and Vieux built and operated a toll bridge over the river. He charged Oregon Trail travelers one dollar per outfit and it was estimated that he earned as much as $300 per day during the peak season of wagon travel. In 1861, Vieux was one of the signers of a treaty allowing the Pottawatomie to hold lands in common or establish individual claims of 80 acres per person or more, depending on their position in the tribe. Vieux served as a business agent and interpreter and occasionally represented the tribe in Washington, D.C. Near here is the Vieux cemetery where members of the Vieux family and other early settlers were buried. Erected by the Pottawatomie County Highway Department

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Flint Hills Discovery Center — 18 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.
• Konza Prairie Biological Station — 22 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.
• Prairie Peoples Park (Prairie Band Potawatomi Nation) — 24 mi
  The Prairie Band Potawatomi Nation's powwow grounds west of Mayetta, on the reservation the band held when most Potawatomi in Kansas took allotments and the promise of citizenship.

More markers nearby

• The Vieux Crossing — 3.6 mi
• St. Marys — 11 mi
• The California-Oregon Trail — 12 mi
• Bluestem in the Flint Hills / Beecher Bibles — 15 mi