For over three decades beginning in 1827, Elm Grove Campground, one mile east of near the bridge on Cedar Creek, served as an important frontier campsite. Thousands of Santa Fe traders, Oregon and California emigrants, missionaries, mountain men, soldiers, and '49ers camped there, including John C Fremont, William Bent, Tom Fitzpatrick, Francis Parkman, and Philip St. George Cooke. Originally named caravan grove, Elm Grove began in 1827 as a result of the Sibley survey of the Santa Fe Trail, when Sibley sought a more direct route through present day Johnson County that bypassed Lone Elm Campground, then known as Round Grove, 2 1/4 miles southeast on the same Cedar Creek, and the two campgrounds were often mistaken for each other. Elm Grove was often used on the first or second night out of Westport. On June 2, 1841, Richard L. Wilson, bound for Santa Fe, wrote in his diary that at sunset his party descended a steep slope to a place where little remained but the name Elm Grove, with a beautiful rivulet bubbling from the base of the hill and a single campfire of an old Mexican hunter. That same year the Bidwell-Bartleson party, the first emigrant wagon train to California, passed through Elm Grove, and part of the Great Migration to Oregon came through in 1843. During the Mexican War, Laclede Rangers and other frontier military units passed through Elm Grove Campground in 1846-48, and many '49ers seeking California gold came through as well. By the mid 1850s the stagecoach from Westport crossed at Cedar Creek, and by 1857 David P. Hougland had bought the land and built a cabin at Elm Grove, and the property remains with the Hougland family today.