Two covered wagons crossing in the background are seen on Kansas’s state flag, a reference to the pioneer roots of the state.
The paths chartered by these covered wagons are still mapped across the state by the National Park Service.
In the early 1800s, the United States forcibly relocated Indian tribes from the Great Lakes area to the Kansas territory. By 1854, the state opened up to settlement by people with European ancestry, and by 1861, the Indian tribes that moved to the area lost most of their land except for a couple small reservations.
“After the Civil War and before 1890 the population of Kansas increased by the greatest amount in its history. More than one million people streamed into Kansas seeking a new life on the frontier,” the Kansas Historical Society’s report on the settlement of Kansas says.
The settlers followed trails that people can still follow today. There are 21 National Historic Trails in the United States, and five pass through Kansas.
What is a National Historic Trail?
The National Parks Service designates National Historic Trails as routes of significance for exploration, migration, struggle, trade or military action.
Not all of them are for the pioneer past. One Civil Rights Movement march is recognized in Alabama from Selma to Montgomery.
The trails vary significantly in length and landscape, with the shortest being the Chilkoot Trail in Alaska at just 33 miles to the 5,600-mile California Trail that runs from Kansas City, Missouri, to Portland, Oregon.
And unlike the trails they follow, the dirt paths are usually gone. The trails tend to mostly follow modern roadways in about the same places the trails passed through.
What Historic Trails go through Kansas?
The National Historic Trails that pass through Kansas are the following:
- California Trail
- Lewis and Clark Trail
- Oregon Trail
- Pony Express Trail
- Santa Fe Trail
The California Trail follows the estimated 250,000 men and women who moved west during the gold rush in the 1840s. It starts on the Kansas-Missouri border up through Nebraska, Wyoming, Idaho, Utah, Nevada, California and Oregon.
The Lewis and Clark Trail begins in western Pennsylvania and follows the famous explorers Meriwether Lewis and William Clark’s continent-spanning journey across what is now the United States.
From Kansas City, it goes north along the border before crossing into Nebraska.
But the Lewis and Clark Trail was rugged, and most settlers moving by wagon used the Oregon Trail in their westward trek. The trail starts in Independence, Missouri, and goes northwest from Topeka in a route that ends in Oregon City, Oregon.
As reported in the Topeka Capital Journal
