124 Northwind Drive, Valley Center, Kansas, United States
Lost Springs, Kansas, United States
Marion County Santa Fe trail watering stop. In 1859, Lost Spring Station was established by George Smith, who had previously operated a stage station at Cottonwood Crossing. It first served as a “road ranch” with a hotel and tavern. It was located on the south side of the trail southeast of the spring and situated on a knoll where one could see up and down the treeless ravine and creek bed. The three-room structure measured 30 feet by 40 feet with an L extension on the south side containing the dining room and kitchen. The construction was of siding with the roof covered with sod and dirt. Southwest of the ranch house was a stockade with eight-foot posts enclosing about an acre of ground. This spring is located about 250-300 feet north of 340th Road in a small grassy tract of land about 1.5 miles west of the town of Lost Springs. Scattered scrub trees now dot the immediate area where the spring is located. However, no trees would have been found there in the early days of the Santa Fe Trail travel. Several decades ago, the site was a popular picnic ground.
A branch of the Santa Fe Trail passed to the south of the spring and south of 340th Road, but no visible evidence of that trail remains in the immediate vicinity. This is where the stage station stood.
Today, the site is listed on the National Register of Historic Places for its association with transportation and commerce along the Santa Fe Trail.
A Avenue, White City, Kansas
Skiddy, Kansas, located on the boundary line between Morris and Geary Counties, got its start in 1869 by settlers from Pennsylvania and New Jersey organized by W.E. Tomlinson. It is a ghost town today. the town was named for Francis Skiddy, an investor from New York who provided the railroad with money. In exchange for naming the town after him, Francis Skiddy volunteered to build a town hall for the community. the town was named for Francis Skiddy, an investor from New York who provided the railroad with money. In exchange for naming the town after him, Francis Skiddy volunteered to build a town hall for the community.
5th Street, Herington, Kansas
Delavan, Kansas, located in southwest Morris County, was founded in 1885 by Henry Kingman and named for his hometown of Delavan, Illinois.
A year later, the Topeka, Salina, and Western Railroad extended its tracks from Council Grove to a point just east of Delavan. During World War II, the town got a boost when the Herington Army Airfield was established in 1942 at nearby Herington, Kansas, in adjacent Dickinson County, about seven miles west of Delavan. The Army airfield took some 14 months to build, putting several Delavan people to work. The base, however, closed just two years later, in 1945. The Delavan High School closed in 1950, and students were bussed to Wilsey for classes.
Delavan’s post office closed in 1992. All that remains of Delavan today is the Grandview Township Community Center, which once served as the Delavan Grade School, and some old rusting grain silos.
Bb Avenue, Burdick, Kansas
124 Northwind Drive, Valley Center, Kansas, United States
2299 Diamond Creek Road, Burdick, Kansas
When the Santa Fe Trail was first surveyed in 1825, Diamond Spring, Kansas, was called the Diamond of the Plains, and records of Santa Fe traders who passed by Diamond Spring date back as early as 1821. The spring was first named Jones Spring by George Sibley during the 1825 survey of the Santa Fe Trail in honor of Ben Jones, who discovered the welcome source of water.
401 Commercial Street, Council Grove, Kansas
Dunlap, Kansas, was founded in 1869 by Joseph Dunlap, an Indian agent for the Kanza tribe. The town was situated on the Missouri, Kansas & Texas Railway. In the spring of 1878, Benjamin “Pap” Singleton, a former slave who escaped to freedom in 1846, chose Dunlap as a place to relocate numerous freedmen known as “Exodusters.” In May, the freedmen came by the hundreds from the post-Reconstruction South to seek homesteads in what was called the Singleton Dunlap Farm Colony. By 1910, the population of the small town was about 333 and its location on the Neosho River, in the midst of rich agricultural land, had made the community an important shipping point for portions of Morris, Chase, and Lyon Counties. The Dunlap Colored Cemetery, listed on the National Register of Historic Places today, is approximately one-half mile north and east of the town of Dunlap and nine miles southeast of Council Grove. The earliest burials in the cemetery date to 1880; the last interment was in 1993.
