Kansas, Douglas County, near Kanwaka
![]()
A Camping Ground
Lecompton
Territorial Capital of Kansas
1855-1861
Three miles north
(Environment • Exploration • Roads & Vehicles • Settlements & Settlers) Includes location, directions, 3 photos, GPS coordinates, map.
A Camping Ground
Lecompton
Territorial Capital of Kansas
1855-1861
Three miles north
(Environment • Exploration • Roads & Vehicles • Settlements & Settlers) Includes location, directions, 3 photos, GPS coordinates, map.
Called “Pathfinder”, he was known as the west’s greatest adventurer, noted for bravery and his meticulously recorded notes on vegetation and geography. On his 3rd expedition across California in 1845 he, along with Kit Carson, led the California pioneers to rebel against Mexico to gain independence.
At 19, he was hired for an expedition to California. They traveled south of the Grand Canyon, crossed the Colorado, then followed the dry bed of the Mojave River and crossed the mountains at Cajon Pass to arrive at San Gabriel Mission in early 1830. In the 1840’s he guided Fremont several times across the high desert.
He was “the Father of the US Calvary” and President Polk named him “Commander of the Army of the West”. In 1848 he went from Santa Fe, NM on to CA with 100 men on an arduous trip across our desert and on to a battle at San Pascual in a fight for independence from Mexico.
The Southern Route of the Mormon Trail followed paths explored by Father Garces and Jedediah Smith. In 1848, Mormon Battalion Captain Jefferson Hunt trailed cattle to Utah on this trail. The Daniel Davis family, also of the Mormon Battalion, followed in a covered wagon – the first American family to travel the route.
Pete Walters of Ogilby discovered the first gold vien at Gold Rock on January 6, 1884. From his little Mary claim began a gold camp which reached its peak development between 1893 and 1899 as Hedges, with 3200 residents. Nearly closed, 1900-10, it was reopened as Tumco, 1910-13, and worked intermittently until 1941. Tumco has long been a California Ghost Town.
Opened by placer miners after 1852, the gold mines expanded into hard rock quarrying by 1872. Picacho employed 700 miners at its peak from 1895 to 1900. Mill accidents, low ore quality, and the loss of cheap river transport with the building of Laguna Dam, led to numerous periods of inactivity. With ores far from worked out, the Picacho mines using modern techniques again resumed operations in 1984.
This church, located on Beaufain Street for 91 years, was organized in 1847 to give free blacks and slaves in
antebellum Charleston a separate Episcopal congregation of their own. The Rev. Paul Trapier was its first minister,
and the church met in the St. Philip's Episcopal Church parsonage, then in Temperance Hall, before acquiring a
lot at the corner of Beaufain and Wilson Streets.
General Tadeusz Kościuszko
This Federal period house stands on land which was originally a part of the well-known farm of Annetje Jans, granted to her by Director General Van Twiller in 1636. After 1765, the Harrison Brewery occupied the land, hence the name Harrison Street. 
Opposite this tablet in Hudson Street stood the house of Leonard Lispenard In which General George Washington was entertained June 25, 1775 while en route from Philadelphia to Cambridge to Assume Command of the Continental Army.
In 1832, Sylvanus Blackburn left Tennessee with a wagon and four oxen, and came to the War Eagle River valley in Arkansas. He spent the winter building a log home and clearing the land of his homestead. He brought his wife from Tennessee the next year. One of Sylvanus' first projects was a water-powered grist mill. In 1838, a flood on War Eagle destroyed the mill. A second mill, four stories tall, was soon erected. Five of Blackburn's sons joined the Confederate Army and the rest of the family went to Texas. The retreating Confederate Army burned the mill on War Eagle to prevent its use by Federal troops. Sylvanu's sixth son, James Austin Cameron Blackburn, built the third mill in 1873. The village of War Eagle grew around the grist mill. There was a sawmill, carpentry shop, and a blacksmith shop, but the grist mill was the center of activities -- socializing, square dancing, and weddings. In 1924, once again the mill burned. For nearly 50 years only the dam and raceway remained. In 1973, centennial year of the original mill, Jewell A., Leta Medlin and Zoe Medlin Caywood built the existing fourth mill on the same foundation as an authentic reproduction of the first mill to preserve the history of grist milling.
