The Marking of the Santa Fe Trail: Part I

2022

By Carol Jenkner

 

            In 1902 it had been twenty-two years since the official closure of the Santa Fe Trail and much of it was being obliterated by settlement and agriculture. People liked to read old-timers’ accounts of life traveling that trail of commerce and conquest, but if asked, few could tell you where it had begun and the parts of Kansas it had run through.

            In 1902 the Daughters of the American Revolution in Kansas held their annual meeting in Ottawa, Kansas where State Regent, Fanny Geiger Thompson, introduced a new project for the Kansas DAR; she suggested making the Santa Fe Trail across Kansas. Although Mrs. Thompson unexpectedly died not long after, her idea was fostered by associates and reintroduced the following year in Topeka.

            At the project’s end, ninety-six markers were placed across Kansas. DAR Chapters in Colorado, Missouri, New Mexico and Oklahoma followed suit leaving us a clear reminder of the Santa Fe Trail in its two hundredth year.