Frontier in Lincoln County

This roadside marker tells of one of the most violent frontiers in Kansas. As white settlers pushed up the Saline and Solomon river valleys in the eighteen sixties, the Plains tribes fought desperately to hold their hunting grounds, and Lincoln County saw a grim succession of raids.

In eighteen sixty four, Cheyenne warriors trapped four buffalo hunters against a rocky ledge south of here and killed them after a bitter fight. In eighteen sixty eight, three women who had been captured and abused were found days later, half dead on the open prairie. And in eighteen sixty nine, ten settlers were killed and two women taken captive along the Saline River and Spillman Creek, with federal troops later rescuing one of the women far away in Colorado. A monument to the victims of those years stands today on the courthouse square in the town of Lincoln.