After crossing the Blue River and entering Riley County at the foot of Poyntz Avenue, the Great Military Road proceeded west to this point, where it angled southwest through the grounds of Theodore Roosevelt School and Longs Park and squeezed between the south end of the ridge in Sunset Park and the Kansas River channel, where Ft. Riley Blvd. is now located. From this point, two additional branches angled off, one north to the Rocky Ford area and one northwest to join the Old Indian Trail near Cico Park. Passing through Manhattan in 1859 on their way to the Colorado gold fields, New York Tribune journalists Albert D. Richardson and Horace Greeley described Manhattan as "a flourishing Yankee settlement of two or three hundred people."