Mine Creek Battlefield State Historic Site

On the morning of October 25, 1864, Sterling Price's Confederate army, beaten at Westport two days before and retreating south through Kansas, piled up at the ford of Mine Creek. The crossing was hard and the wagon train jammed, so Generals James Fagan and John Marmaduke turned to fight north of the creek, on a line about 800 yards long with the stream at their backs. The Kansas Historical Society counts about 7,000 Confederates there, against two Union brigades of about 2,500 under Colonel John F. Philips and Lieutenant Colonel Frederick W. Benteen.

Benteen judged that the Confederate guns stood so close to the front that they could fire only a round or two before horsemen reached them, and the Union brigades charged mounted. The charge stalled when the 10th Missouri Cavalry stopped under fire, until the 4th Iowa went forward again and the rest followed. At close quarters the Union troopers' repeating rifles told against men armed mostly with single-shot weapons, and the Confederate line broke back toward a creek it could not cross. Many were taken prisoner, Marmaduke among them, along with eight or ten cannon. Confederate losses ran to about 1,200, Union losses to about 100.

The state made the field a historic site in 1974, and the American Battlefield Trust and its partners have preserved 326 acres of it. Marked trails cross the ground down to the creek. The grounds are open dawn to dusk all year; the visitor center is closed from October 4, 2026, until April 2027.