Life By The Santa Fe Trail

Kenneth McClintock brags about the baked ham and the homemade bread served at the Hays House Restaurant, but what can’t be beat, he insists, is the local history.

Since 1857, travelers have filled up at the Hays House on the Santa Fe Trail. It’s the oldest continuously operated restaurant west of the Mississippi, opened by Seth Hays, great-grandson of Daniel Boone and the founder of Council Grove, Kan. (pop. 2,321).

“Thousands of merchants traveled the Santa Fe Trail. Council Grove was an international trading post,” says McClintock, a historian who portrays Hays during Wah-Shun-Gah Days, a community celebration held the third weekend in June. Wah-Shun-Gah was the last Kaw Indian chief born in the area.

Although canvas-covered wagons no longer rumble along Main Street and the Neosho River, the Santa Fe Trail still defines the town. Remnants of the trail days can be seen at 21 historic landmarks, including nine National Historic Santa Fe Trail sites.

“Council Grove was the most important stop on the Santa Fe Trail,” says Don Cress, who founded the local chapter of the Santa Fe Trail Association.

The 800-mile route was established in 1821 to carry goods between frontier Missouri and Santa Fe, N.M. Wagon trains rendezvoused at Council Grove before pushing westward across the rugged and treeless plains.

“We had abundant hardwoods here to make wagon repairs. And this was the last place to buy beans, sow belly, and whiskey until you got to Santa Fe,” Cress says. Travelers stocked up at The Last Chance Store, a one-room 1857 limestone building that stands today.

Cress, 83, became fascinated with trail history when he was 6. “I’d ride by all these places on a horse to go to school,” he recalls. “It stuck with me that I lived where the Kaw Indians once lived.”

Council Grove has been called the birthplace of the Santa Fe Trail because of the treaty signed here Aug. 10, 1825, giving Americans safe passage through Osage Indian land. Gathered in the shade of a 70-foot-tall oak, a council of U.S. commissioners and Osage chiefs forged the agreement in exchange for $800.

The Council Oak blew down in a windstorm in 1958, but the stump remains a sheltered landmark, and the council and vast grove of trees inspired the town’s name.

Council Grove also has preserved the trunks of two other landmark trees: the Post Office Oak that served as an unofficial post office for travelers who left messages at its base, and the Custer Elm where Gen. George Armstrong Custer camped while patrolling the trail.

Other historic sites include the 1851 Kaw Mission built by the Methodist Episcopal Church to educate the Kaw children, the 1858 Conn Stone Store trading post, the 1892 Farmers and Drovers Bank, and the 1867 Cottage House hotel. The 1861 Terwilliger Home was the last house that travelers passed on their journey westward.

But the primary gathering spot in Custer’s day, and now, is the Hays House, owned by Alisa and Rick Paul. Along with being a grub spot, the building over the years has served as a newspaper office, courtroom, hotel, and church.

Paul points with pride to the original log beams, stone fireplace, and bar. On Saturday nights, he notes, the bottles were covered so church could be held inside on Sunday morning.

Just as in trail times, travelers leaving Council Grove can experience miles of tallgrass prairie in the rolling Flint Hills. Sixteen miles south is the 11,000-acre Tallgrass Prairie National Preserve, the country’s only national park dedicated to preserving a remnant of prairie.

Five miles west of the still-bustling trading-post town is one of Cress’ favorite places. In the quiet, he imagines a flotilla of wagons, because etched into the prairie here are 150-year-old wagon ruts.

“See where the grass dips a little?” he says. “That’s it. That’s the trail. If you like history, it’s here.”

Marti Attoun is a frequent contributor to American Profile.

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