Mile 228: Kiowa Station
“Near Kiowa Station the nature of the terrain changed. The hitherto smooth slopes broke into rain-gutted saddles and deep-washed gullies. The wagons had steered a dizzy course like a line…
Little Blue Valley
“For years Marysville, Kansas, marked the end of the truly settled country; but the Little Blue Valley, so, charming and so fertile, sheltered a sort of border zone of ranches…
The Big Blue
“Except under abnormal conditions the camp site under these old trees [by the Big Blue] was an oasis, comfortable and even luxurious with fresh-water clams from the river, berries from…
Rolling Prairie
“Our way led over a succession of grassy swells spaced at intervals with breezeless hollows. What a country to have traveled before the day of the graded road and the…
Mile 137: Marysville/Palmetto
"Palmetto City and Marysville were adjacent settlements, the latter being one of the oldest and best known towns of northern Kansas, which had been laid out by Frank J. Marshall (Overland Stage,…
Mile 82: Log Chain Station
"David M. Locknane's station (Log Chain of later accounts) was located on a branch of the Grasshopper river, and was termed by Burton 'Big Muddy Station.' It is said that an early…
Mile 48: Kennekuk
"Frank A. Root writes in The Overland Stage (pp. 190, 191): 'Kennekuk was the first 'home' station out from Atchison, and here drivers were changed. It was a little town of perhaps…
Kansas Stations
"Cold Springs was located between Troy and Kennekuk. Burton [in The City of Saints] has twisted the order of stations here, which should read: Troy, Cold Spring, Syracuse and Kennekuk."
Mile 120: Guittard’s Station
"Going east passengers seldom passed by the house of this Frenchman [Guittard]. He kept one of the best ranches on the whole line and he was known along the overland from Atchison…
Mile 278: Spring Ranch
"We then resumed our journey over a desert, waterless save after rain, for twenty-three miles; it is the divide between the Little Blue and the Platte rivers, a broken table-land rising gradually toward…
Mile 137: Marysville
"Passing by Marysville, in old maps Palmetto City, a county town which thrives by selling whisky to ruffians of all descriptions, we forded before sunset the 'Big Blue,' a well-known tributary of the…
Mile 120: Guittard’s Station
"Beyond Guittard's the prairies bore a burnt-up aspect. Far as the eye could see the tintage was that of the Arabian Desert, sere and tawny as a jackal's back."
Mile 48: Kennekuk
"Without changing mules we advanced to Kennekuk, where we halted for an hour's supper under the auspices of Major Baldwin, whilom Indian agent; the place was clean, and contained at least one charming face. Kennekuk…
Mile 27: Valley Home
"The next settlement, Valley Home, was reached at 6 P.M. Here the long wave of the ocean land broke into shorter seas, and for the first time that day we saw stones,…
Mile 16: Troy
"Passing through a few wretched shanties called Troy—last insult to the memory of hapless Pergamus—and Syracuse (here we are in the third, or classic stage of United States nomenclature), we made, at 3…