Historic Markers in Kansas

Cherokee County, KS

On October 6, 1863, Union General James G. Blunt and roughly a hundred men were ambushed near Baxter's Springs by William Quantrill's Confederate guerrillas, some disguised in Union blue. The deception let the raiders close in before the escort could react, and much of Blunt's party was cut down in the fighting that followed. The episode was one of the bloodiest guerrilla actions on the Kansas-Missouri border.

Leavenworth, KS

This cannon commemorates the crucial aid France provided to the American colonists during the Revolutionary War, from 1776 to 1782. French money, arms, troops, and naval power — decisive at the 1781 siege of Yorktown — helped secure American independence. The display honors that alliance between the young republic and its European ally.

Brown County, KS

In Hiawatha's Mount Hope Cemetery stands the Davis Memorial, an extravagant array of marble statues commissioned by farmer John Milburn Davis after the death of his wife. Beginning in the 1930s, Davis poured much of his fortune into the carved figures depicting the couple across their lives, a lavish and much-debated act of grief during the lean years of the Great Depression. The result became one of Kansas's best-known roadside curiosities.

Leavenworth, KS

This marker notes Fort Leavenworth's designation as a Registered National Historic Landmark. Established in 1827 on the Missouri River, the fort was a key staging point for the westward-bound Santa Fe and Oregon Trails and the oldest continuously active U.S. Army post west of the Mississippi. For generations it guarded the frontier and outfitted expeditions pushing into the West.

Osborne, KS

This marker points toward a bronze plate on a ranch southeast of Osborne known to surveyors as the Geodetic Center of North America. The nearby Meades Ranch station served as the reference point for the North American Datum of 1927, the mathematical foundation from which nearly all maps and surveys of the continent were once calculated. For much of the twentieth century, this quiet Kansas prairie was the literal starting point for measuring the map of a continent.

Hays, KS

Built in 1894, this Hays, Kansas home belonged to John Schyler, whose life traced the arc of the closing frontier "from buffalo hunter to statesman." A man who had once chased the great bison herds across the plains lived to see the prairie tamed into towns and politics, becoming a civic figure in the process. His dates, 1849 to 1926, span the very decades that transformed the American West.

Leavenworth, KS

This marker along the Lewis and Clark Trail quotes from William Clark's journal describing the Corps of Discovery's passage near this spot on the Missouri River. In 1804 the expedition traveled up this stretch on its epic journey to the Pacific, mapping the land, recording its peoples and wildlife, and opening the West to American imagination. Clark's daily entries remain a vivid primary record of the young nation's reach across the continent.

Hiawatha, KS

In the early 1900s, Hiawatha resident Elizabeth Krebs grew tired of the vandalism that Halloween pranksters visited on her Kansas town, and organized costume parties and a parade to give young people a wholesome outlet instead. Her festivals are often credited as an early template for the community-organized, family-friendly Halloween celebrations that later spread across America.

Leavenworth, KS

This stone wall dates to 1827, the founding year of the military post that became Fort Leavenworth, and reflects the frontier fortifications raised in the earliest days of the U.S. Army's westward presence. Built during a period of tension between the government and Plains nations, it stands as a physical trace of the fort's origins on the edge of settled America.

Ottawa, KS

Dedicated in November 1962, this marker honors Russell L. Crites, George E. Lister, Lamar Phillips, and other Ottawa citizens who championed the flood-control works taming the Marais des Cygnes River. The river had repeatedly ravaged eastern Kansas — most catastrophically in the great floods of 1951 — and the project reflected the postwar drive to engineer safety into America's river valleys. It marks a community's hard-won victory over recurring disaster.

Ottawa, KS

This preserved caboose, an Atchison, Topeka and Santa Fe CE-5 class car numbered 999962, recalls the golden age of American railroading when the Santa Fe was one of the great transcontinental lines. The caboose was the crew's rolling office and home at the tail of a freight train, where conductors kept paperwork and brakemen watched for trouble along the cars ahead — a fixture of railroads before modern electronics made it obsolete.

Salina, KS

This plaza commemorates Steve Fossett's record-setting flight aboard the Virgin Atlantic GlobalFlyer, which in 2005 completed the first solo, nonstop, non-refueled flight around the world. The purpose-built aircraft launched from Salina, Kansas, whose long runway made the ambitious circumnavigation possible.

Leavenworth, KS

This marker identifies the parade ground of Old Cantonment Leavenworth, around which Colonel Henry Leavenworth and his soldiers erected the post's first permanent buildings beginning in 1827. The site he chose on the Missouri River would grow into Fort Leavenworth, a linchpin of the army's frontier operations. The parade ground was the ceremonial and organizational heart of the early post.

Lawrence, KS

Presented to the city of Lawrence by the local Navy League in 1964, this Polaris missile display honors the fleet ballistic missile submarines that formed a pillar of American nuclear deterrence at the height of the Cold War. Launched from submerged submarines, Polaris missiles gave the United States a hidden, mobile retaliatory force, and communities across the country accepted such displays as tangible emblems of national defense.

Lincoln Center, KS

This monument honors the Union soldiers and sailors who served between 1861 and 1865, the years of the Civil War. Kansas entered the Union as a free state on the eve of the conflict and sent a high share of its men into federal service. Memorials like this one rose across the Midwest as veterans aged and communities sought to fix their sacrifice in stone.

Paola, KS

This wall bears the names of veterans from Miami County, Kansas, honoring residents who served in the armed forces. Honor-roll walls like this gather a community's servicemembers into a single permanent record, cutting across generations and conflicts. It functions as a local shrine to service rather than a monument to one particular war.