Kansas, Douglas County, Lawrence
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Erected by
Company H
20th Kansas Inft. U.S.V.
Eighth Army Corps
Spanish-American War
1898 – 1899
(Cemeteries & Burial Sites • Man-Made Features • Patriots & Patriotism • War, Spanish-American) Includes location, directions, 3 photos, GPS coordinates, map.
Erected by
Company H
20th Kansas Inft. U.S.V.
Eighth Army Corps
Spanish-American War
1898 – 1899
(Cemeteries & Burial Sites • Man-Made Features • Patriots & Patriotism • War, Spanish-American) Includes location, directions, 3 photos, GPS coordinates, map.
Once the Willow Springs freight stop on the Santa Fe Trail, the town of Raton developed from A.T. & S.F. repair shops established when the railroad crossed Raton Pass in 1879. Valuable coal deposits attracted early settlers. Nearby Clifton House was a stagecoach stop until the Trail was abandoned after 1879.
On May 1, 1865, five days after Confederate Gen. Joseph E. Johnston surrendered to Union Gen. William T. Sherman near Durham Station, approximately 12,000 to 15,000 troops of Sherman’s Army of the Tennessee camped in Louisburg en route to Washington, D.C. Commanded by Gens. John A. Logan and Oliver O. Howard, their tents filled the groves of Louisburg Female College (1857), where you are standing and of Louisburg Male Academy (1805) across Main Street, to your left. The college was housed in the four-story structure to your right, known today as Main Building. The male academy building was later moved to a site northeast of the performing arts center, where it remains.
Left Panel:
Eastern Colorado Historical Society
Bent's Ranch on the Purgatoire River
This monument
Named for the great western scout, guide, trapper, and Indian fighter. Located on famous trails – at the junction of the Smoky Hill stagecoach route and the Texas – Montana, Potter and Bacon, and Chisum cattle trails. On the old Kansas Pacific Railroad, at junction of branches running to Denver and to Las Animas.
The fertile North Loup Valley provided food and construction materials for the early settlers of this region. When they came here in 1872 they were greeted by Jack Swearengen, a trapper, guide, and government scout. He lived near here in a dugout in the white chalk bluffs that rise above the valley. The highest hill became known as "Happy Jack's Peak" and served as a lookout-point to guard against surprise Indian attacks.
In 1908 John Harrop, originally from Roca, Nebraska, filed a homestead claim just west of the
Calamus River about thirteen miles north of Taylor in Loup County. Harrop acquired 640 acres
under the Kinkaid Act of 1904, which had been passed to encourage settlement in the Nebraska
Sand Hills. By 1912 Harrop operated a mercantile store and the Harrop post office at his home.
There are two markers, side by side.
First called Camp Pond Creek, Fort Wallace was established in 1865. The fort served as the headquarters for troops given the task of protecting travelers headed west along the Smoky Hill Trail to the Denver gold fields. Fort Wallace was the westernmost military outpost in Kansas, and from 1865 to 1878 served as one of the most active military posts in the Central Plains. Troops often spent time in the field, and the fort was several times attacked by Plains Indians striving to defend their lands and protect their way of life.
Smoky Hill Trail
When the Kansas Territory was created in 1854, it stretched all the way to the Rocky Mountains. The current state boundary, a few miles west of here, took effect in 1861 when Kansas was admitted into the Union and the Colorado Territory was established. Thousands of Colorado-bound pioneers passed through here along the Smoky Hill Trail by wagon and on the Butterfield Overland Despatch. Beginning in 1865 this famous stage line carried passengers, freight, and mail from the eastern point of the railroad to Denver. The Omaha Herald cautioned stagecoach passengers to “expect annoyance, discomfort, and some hardships,” although humorist and author Mark Twain found travel to be an adventure.
