Wagon Bed Springs

The spring no longer flows. Its water came from an outcrop of the Ogallala Formation, and center-pivot irrigation beside it lowered the water table until the spring stopped in the 1960s. The ground had already shifted: floods on the Cimarron beginning in 1914 widened the river bed until the spring site lay inside it. The Daughters of the American Revolution had marked the place in 1907. National Park Service investigations in the early 1990s mapped the spring area and found the core ground where caravans camped, some of it outside the landmark's first assumed boundaries.

What the plaque says

Wagon Bed Springs About two miles west were the Lower Springs of the Cimarron River, known today as Wagon Bed Springs. For early-day travelers on the famous Santa Fe Trail, the springs were an "oasis" in dry weather. Several shortcuts of the trail converged here, with the most popular route running between here and the Arkansas River near the present-day town of Cimarron. The sixty-mile stretch between the two rivers, known as the Jornada, was a perilous route for men and animals in dry seasons when wagon trains often ran out of water. Near here in 1831, the noted western explorer and fur trader Jedediah Smith, after being lost and without water for four days, was killed by Comanches just as he reached the river. Late in the history of the trail a wagon bed was set in the ground to collect water from one of the springs. The springs take their name from that event. Despite the importance of this famous camping place, today there are few visible remains of the many travelers who once stayed here. In nearby areas, however, trail ruts can still be seen, left by the many wagons that traversed the trail. Erected by Kansas State Historical Society & Kansas Department of Transportation

Where it stands