Council Grove and the Santa Fe Trail

You are standing in Council Grove, one of the most important way stations on the entire Santa Fe Trail. The town takes its name from a council held here in eighteen twenty-five, when United States commissioners met with the Osage to negotiate safe passage for traders crossing their lands. That agreement opened the road to Santa Fe, and this grove of timber along the Neosho River became the last dependable spot to cut wood, repair wagons, and organize into caravans before the long, treeless plains ahead.

Wagon trains assembled here for the dangerous run southwest into what is now New Mexico. Council Grove preserves an astonishing density of trail history, from the Post Office Oak where travelers left mail between eighteen twenty-five and eighteen forty-seven to the Kaw Mission and the Council Oak itself. The whole town is recognized as a Santa Fe Trail National Historic Landmark, a living museum of America's first great commercial highway to the Southwest.