The Smoky Hill Trail

This marker stands on the old Smoky Hill Trail, the shortest overland route from Kansas to Denver. From the mid eighteen fifties until about eighteen seventy, gold seekers, freight wagons, immigrants, and stagecoaches all pushed west across this ground toward the goldfields of Colorado.

The shortcut came with a price. One long stretch became known as the Starvation Trail, a long gap with almost no food or water, where travelers and animals gave out.

In time a famous line came through, the Butterfield Overland Despatch, which began service from Atchison, Kansas in eighteen sixty-five. The railroad soon made the trail obsolete, but its ruts and stories remain.