The Leavenworth and Pike's Peak Express

The man who called this station desolate had reason to be sore. Horace Greeley joined Albert Richardson's coach at Manhattan, Kansas, and near Station 17 the mules bolted, broke a line and ran down a steep bank, overturning it. Greeley came out bleeding from cuts to his cheek, arm and leg and stayed lame for days. His desolation letter is dated Station 18, June 2. Others saw the place differently: a Denver correspondent that year found Station No. 18 "in a beautiful grove of cotton-woods." The coach reached Denver on June 6, eleven days out of Leavenworth.

What the plaque says

The Leavenworth and Pike's Peak Express In the spring of 1859 William H. Russell and John S. Jones established The Leavenworth and Pike's Peak Express to carry passengers and freight from the Missouri River to the Colorado gold fields. The route crossed northern Kansas, detouring northwest through an area lacking wood or water, to reach the Republican River in this vicinity. The company's station eighteen was located southwest of here near the present Hitchcock-Dundy County line. Noted newspaperman Horace Greeley took the stagecoach to Denver and stopped at the tempor- ary tent station on June 2, 1859. He wrote "I would match this station and its surroundings against any other scene on our continent for desolation." After The Leavenworth and Pike's Peak Express acquired the Hockaday mail contract to California, its stagecoaches were rerouted through the Platte Valley beginning in July 1859. The original sta- tions in Western Kansas and along the Republican River in Nebraska, including station eighteen, were abondoned. Emigrants and settlers continued to use the old trail for a few more years. Nebraska State Historical Society Ola Chapter 317 Eastern Star

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Massacre Canyon Monument — 15 mi
  A granite shaft east of Trenton above the canyon where Lakota warriors attacked a Pawnee buffalo-hunting camp on August 5, 1873, a year before the Pawnee left Nebraska.

More markers nearby

• Massacre Canyon — 15 mi
• Prisoners of War in Hitchcock County — 15 mi
• Nature's Gift: The Highway 34 Springs — 16 mi
• Prisoners of War in Dundy County — 16 mi