Santa Fe Trail in Rice County

One of Southwest and Plains tribes’ long-established trade routes entered today’s Kansas southeast of Dodge City, proceeded northeast across several tributaries of the Arkansas to the vicinity of today’s Lyons before veering to the northeast. Centuries later, William Bucknell and other Missouri traders retraced the trails while transporting freight to and from Santa Fe, New Mexico. Their journey on what became to be known as the Santa Fe Trail set off decades of commercial trail travel. For almost 50 years, from 1821 to 1871, wagons passed along the Santa Fe Trail almost through the exact middle of Rice County bearing tons of trade goods worth millions from eastern terminals like Westport near Kansas City to Santa Fe and back again. In 1871, the Atchison Topeka and the Santa Fe Railroad, which made overland travel to Santa Fe unnecessary, sold its Rice County land to farmers and land developers

Five famed Santa Fe Trail sites are in Rice County:

• Stone corral. Less than a mile inside Rice County, on the Arkansas River a 6’ high stone corral sheltered animals for trail campers. Nearby was a trail trading post and station for military troops, including the 10th U. S. Cavalry “Buffalo Soldiers”) in 1865 and 1867. 
• Chavez murder site. In 1843, Antonio Jose Chavez set out for St. Louis with four pounds of gold dust. Robbers intercepted his caravan just east of the present city of Lyons and killed him. They tossed his body into a gully now Jarvis Creek. 
• Campground by Cow Creek. William Mathewson, the famed “Buffalo Bill,” had a trading post near the crossing about four miles west of present Lyons. 
• Plum Buttes Massacre. A little over a mile from Plum Buttes, a Santa Fe Trail landmark with 100-foot sand dunes between Cow Creek and the Big Bend of the Arkansas River, a band of Cheyenne, Kiowa, and Arapaho burned traveling wagons and killed several. 
• Ralph’s Ruts. Obvious wagon swales have been preserved on 40 sandy acres four miles west of Chase.