Lawrence and the Old Trails

You are traveling near the great overland trails of the eighteen hundreds. Just north ran the Oregon and California Trail, the route of explorers, missionaries, soldiers, land seekers, and forty niners chasing gold. Not far south lay the Santa Fe Trail, a road of trade and commerce for more than fifty years.

From the Missouri River it was roughly two thousand miles to Oregon and California, and many hundreds of miles to Santa Fe, along paths first worn by Native peoples, including the Kaw, the Delaware, the Shawnee, and the Kickapoo. Travelers often stopped in nearby Lawrence after the town was founded in eighteen fifty four. Lawrence became famous as a free state stronghold in the fight over slavery, and some of its citizens helped freedom seekers escape along the underground railroad, before the town was burned in Quantrill's raid of eighteen sixty three.