The Road to Santa Fe

The Franklin the plaque names no longer stands where Becknell knew it. Founded on the Missouri River in 1816 and named for Benjamin Franklin, it was the town near which William Becknell farmed, a few miles from the salt spring at Boone's Lick, and it was integral to the early Santa Fe trade. Around 1826 a sixteen-year-old apprentice in a Franklin saddle shop, Kit Carson, slipped away with a Santa Fe-bound caravan. In 1827 a Missouri River flood destroyed much of the town, and its people rebuilt on higher ground nearby as New Franklin.

What the plaque says

The Road to Santa Fe The Santa Fe trail, extending 750 miles from the Kansas City area to the old Spanish settlement of Santa Fe, was the great overland trade route of the 1820's to 1870's. Its commercial use began in 1821, when William Becknell headed west with a pack train from Franklin, Mo. For more than 500 miles the road lay in Kansas, angling southwest past such historic landmarks as Council Grove and Pawnee Rock. Between present Larned and Fort Dodge, there were two routes. One, keeping to the ridges and higher ground, was used in wet weather. The other, favored during dry spells, lay along the bottom lands near the Arkansas river. West of this marker the trail divided again. One road, following the north bank of the Arkansas, led to Bent's Fort in Colorado and then dropped south to Santa Fe. A second route crossed the river at several places between here and the Lakin vicinity. This was the famed cut-off to the Cimarron river which continued through southwest Kansas past Wagon Bed Springs and Point of Rocks. Although it was shorter, lack of water and the constant threat of Indian attack made it extremely dangerous. Erected by Kansas Historical Society and State Highway Commission

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Boot Hill Museum — 6.7 mi
  Dodge City's museum on the site of the original Boot Hill cemetery, a 1950s replica of Front Street built around a collection one family began gathering in the 1870s.
• Santa Fe Trail Ruts west of Dodge City — 16 mi
  Two miles of wagon swales up to 400 feet wide on a grass hillside above the Arkansas, nine miles west of Dodge City, a National Historic Landmark seen from a pull-off on US-50.
• Fromme-Birney Round Barn — 28 mi
  A sixteen-sided horse barn of 1912 on the wheat country south of Mullinville, built for 28 draft horses and a French Percheron stallion and outdated by a tractor four years later.

More markers nearby

• Fort Dodge — 3.7 mi
• Dodge City: Cowboy Capital — 8.1 mi
• Fort Dodge-Camp Supply Military Road — 20 mi
• The Santa Fe Trail — 24 mi