The Santa Fe, Oregon, and California trails brought both hardship and exhilaration to travelers in caravans passing near here, as letters and diaries recalled adventures, excitement, and difficulty on the prairie. After reaching what is now Gardner, Kansas, some continued west on the Santa Fe Trail while others turned northwest onto the Oregon and California trails. From Westport, a loaded wagon train bound for Santa Fe went south on the Wornall Road in the afternoon to begin a four- to five-month journey, with the long Brush Creek hill serving as an early test of the teams. Joseph Chick wrote around 1850 of yoking up on the 10th day of June and setting out on the long journey, and W. B. Napton wrote in 1857 that everyone in the train, from the captain to the cavayard driver, began in good humor, with perfect weather and an exhilarating view of the seemingly boundless prairie. The historic Fort Leavenworth Military Road, built in the late 1830s a few blocks east of here, connected forts along Missouri's western border with forts as distant as Fort Snelling in Minnesota and Fort Jesup in Louisiana. Those forts and the road formed a line separating Indian tribes on the west from all other people on the east side of the Missouri state line, a situation resulting from the Indian Removal Act of 1830. Until 1854, the Indian Trade and Intercourse Act of 1834 barred towns from legally existing west of the Missouri State Line, so the Santa Fe, Oregon, and California trails began in Westport and Independence, the last places to buy wagons, animals, and outfitting supplies before crossing the line.
