Overland Trails
Background for Teachers
The following excerpt is from Johnson County, Kansas: A Pictorial History, 1825-2005.
The Overland Trails
Favorable reports from traders, emigrants, and soldiers who journeyed through the Shawnee Reservation during the 1830s and 1840s heightened interest in the land reserved for Native Americans. Travel on any of three trails that crisscrossed present-day Johnson County allowed people to experience the region firsthand. The Santa Fe Trail opened in 1821, carrying trade goods between Missouri’s river towns and Mexico; this trade traffic continued for nearly fifty years. In 1865, an estimated 4,500 wagons traveled the Santa Fe Trail. Even larger numbers of people journeyed through the region along the Oregon-California Trail, primarily during the 1840s and 1850s. It is estimated that nearly a half-million people made the two-thousand mile pilgrimage to new homes and opportunity in the Pacific Northwest. Soldiers also traveled through the area on the Fort Leavenworth Military Road, which intersected the Santa Fe Trail near present day Lenexa. Troops sent to fight in the Mexican War of 1846-48 were known to travel this route.
The area that became Johnson County provided campgrounds, grass, and water for the thousands who traveled these three trails. Branches of the Santa Fe and Oregon-California trails ran parallel from the jumping-off towns of Westport and Independence, Missouri. After crossing the state line, travelers on the northern route from Westport passed by the three Shawnee Indian missions (Baptist, Quaker and Methodist) once located in the county. The missions were often used as meeting places for travelers beginning their westward journey.
Overland travelers would often meet a day or two after leaving their starting point to organize their caravans and to train new oxen and mules. This meeting place, often called a rendezvous point, was frequently in Johnson County. For instance, Sapling Grove in present-day Overland Park served as the rendezvous point for the Bidwell-Bartleson group, the first caravan of families to head west on the trail in 1841.
Other travelers spend their first night at the Lone Elm campground south of Olathe. During the spring, when most travelers embarked on their journeys, as many as one hundred wagons a night camped at Lone Elm. Travelers then continued west to the trail junction southwest of today’s Gardner, where the emigrants would either follow the Oregon-California Trail to the northwest and traders would continue southwest on the Santa Fe Trail to Mexico. Traffic along the Santa Fe Trail continued long after the main starting points for emigrant travelers moving farther north to towns like St. Joseph, Missouri and Council Bluffs, Iowa, in the mid-1850s. The local trail continued to be used by traders and by stagecoach lines. The Mahaffie Farmstead, established in 1858, became an inn and stagecoach stop along the Santa Fe Trail near Olathe. It served many travelers until the railroad emerged through the area in the early 1870s.
The following excerpt is from Johnson County, Kansas: A Pictorial History, 1825-2005.
Josiah Gregg, 1806-1850
Overland Trails Outfitter
Josiah Gregg made his living traveling and trading along the Santa Fe Trail. His family immigrated to Missouri in 1812, where Josiah worked in a number of professions, including teaching and medicine. In the fall of 1830, he became ill with consumption, and on the advice of his physician, he headed to the warmer climate of the Southwest in hopes of restoring his health. The trip would be his first of eight trips over the next nine years. His accounts were widely published in newspapers and popular magazines, heightening the public’s interest in the American West and culminated in the 1844 publication The Commerce of the Prairies. He described the busy activity in the jumping-off town of Independence: “As Independence is a point of convenient access,…it has become the general port of embarkation for every part of the great western and northern ‘prairie ocean.’ Besides the Santa Fe caravans, most of the Rocky Mountain traders and trappers, as well as emigrants to Oregon, take this town in their route. During the season of departure…it is a place of much bustle and active business.”
Commerce and industry converged in the Kansas City region during the 1830s and 1840s. Villages and towns along the Missouri River prospered as traders searched for the best place to transfer their goods from water to land travel. Independence, Kansas City, and Westport, Missouri, all profited greatly from trail traffic. New businesses and job opportunities formed to meet the traders’ needs. Men were needed to unload and pack goods and to craft wagons and yokes. Mules and oxen were in great demand, as were other supplies for the long journey.
The trails grew rapidly; the number of wagons leaving the area increased from 650 in 1850 to over 3,000 in 1860 – a nearly fivefold increase in a period of ten years. Wagon teams headed to Santa Fe hauled up to 5,000 pounds of freight each, including domestic cloth, whiskey, tobacco, and groceries. The return trip brought highly coveted wool, buffalo robes, dried buffalo meat, gold dust, and silver ore.
Independence, Missouri, benefited from the majority of the overland trail business until the 1840s, when the United States secured southwest territory in the Mexican-American War. This acquisition ended a trade embargo with Mexico, significantly increasing traffic along the Santa Fe Trail. The cities of Westport and Kansas City then began to share in the profits of the renewed commerce. When Kansas Territory opened for settlement after 1854, other cities in the region, such as St. Joseph and Ft. Leavenworth, tried with little success to lure some of the traffic from Kansas City region.
A DAY ON THE TRAIL
Oregon-California Trail
Women usually got up before dawn, around 4:00 a.m., about a half an hour before the men, to start the fire and begin making breakfast. When breakfast was ready, the men and children got up to eat. After breakfast, women washed the tin ware and packed cooking equipment and food. The men cut their oxen from the herd and drove them to the wagon to be yoked. They then hitched the team and got the wagons ready for the day. Most of the emigrants walked along the wagons while they were traveling, and the men drove the oxen and navigated river crossings. When they could, travelers spread their wagons out instead of traveling in a single line so there wouldn't be animals and people in the dust and mud at the end. After traveling through the morning, they made a brief stop in the middle of the day. This stop was called “nooning.” The men unhitched the team so the animals could graze and made necessary adjustments on the wagons. The women brought a cold lunch which was usually made the night before. The travelers then went on until evening, usually traveling 12 to 15 miles a day. When they stopped, the women started a fire for cooking and hauled water to the campsite. After dinner, they made beds, cleaned out wagons, and mended clothes while the men relaxed. The wagons were pulled together for the night. At the end of the day, the exhausted travelers fell into the blankets to sleep, while some of the men took turns guarding the camp.
Santa Fe Trail
The cook on the Santa Fe Trail also prepared breakfast before dawn. When breakfast was ready, many cooks would shout “Bacon in the pan--Coffee in the pot--Get up and get it--While it's hot!” to wake the other men. The animals were hitched and the wagons pulled out in columns. The caravan traveled in columns whenever they could because otherwise it was too dusty or muddy for the men and animals at the end of the line. The caravan stopped at mid-morning for several hours to eat, rest, hunt, and take care of the animals. They continued in the afternoon, traveling an average of 15 miles a day. Before eating the evening meal, the teams were unhitched and the animals were taken care of. After eating, the men told stories, sang, smoked, and played cards. At night, all the men slept except for those designated to watch for danger during the night.
