Post Office Oak

A large oak in the campground used by Santa Fe Trail travelers served informally as a "post office" from the 1820s to the 1840s, when travelers reputedly left messages in a cavity at the foot of the tree about water sources, Plains Indian unrest, and other information. About 270 years old when it died in 1990 and once 80 feet high, the tree later gave way to more formal mail service after Council Grove's first postmaster was appointed in 1855, although with no official post office he distributed mail from a sack on the street or emptied it onto a store floor for patrons to claim. In the Santa Fe Trail era, communication moved far more slowly, as shown when news of President Abraham Lincoln's April 14, 1865, assassination reached Council Grove on April 20 and Santa Fe fifteen days later on May 5.

Council Grove, Kansas · United States