The Santa Fe Trail: Council Grove to the Dodge City Ruts
About 240 miles of the Santa Fe Trail on US-56 and US-50, from the Osage council ground at Council Grove past Lost Springs, Lyons, Pawnee Rock and Fort Larned to Boot Hill and the ruts west of Dodge City.
The Route at a Glance
Council Grove took its name in 1825, when government commissioners under George Sibley met Osage leaders on the Neosho and paid $800 for a right of way across Osage land. After Seth Hays opened his post in 1847 it was the last supply point short of Bent's Fort, 600 miles on. The town stood on the Kaw reservation of 1846, and Allegawaho Memorial Heritage Park, five miles southeast, is Kaw land again.
Two-thirds of the trail's roughly 750 miles lay in Kansas, and US-56 keeps close to it, bending to Herington and south past Lost Springs, named for a campground spring that sometimes went dry.
By the 1840s much of the traffic was New Mexican. The Chávez and Armijo families entered the trade from 1826, and by 1843 traders from New Mexico and Chihuahua were the majority. That April, in what is now Rice County, Missouri men under John McDaniel robbed Antonio José Chávez's caravan and killed him; McDaniel and one accomplice were executed.
The Coronado-Quivira Museum is on the highway at Lyons. At Great Bend the trail met the Arkansas, and past Pawnee Rock, the halfway point, it entered the hunting country of the Cheyenne, Arapaho, Kiowa, Comanche and Plains Apache. At Larned, K-156 runs west to the Santa Fe Trail Center and Fort Larned.
From Kinsley, US-50 runs to Boot Hill in Dodge City, and the drive ends nine miles west at the ruts, about 240 miles, five hours without stops. US-50 follows the Arkansas 200 miles more to Bent's Old Fort, where the Colorado drive begins.
The Drive, Stop by Stop
6 stops along the route, in driving order from Council Grove, Kansas to Santa Fe Trail Ruts, west of Dodge City, Kansas. 3 of them sit off the road itself — the distance is noted on each.
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That's the drive. Take your time, pull over often, and let The Santa Fe Trail: Council Grove to the Dodge City Ruts do what it does best.
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