A mid-1800s farmhouse on the Santa Fe Trail served as a place of rest and food for weary travelers. From 1865 until 1869, it was a stop for the Barlow and Sanderson Stage Line, where horses were changed and passengers were fed. James Beatty Mahaffie and his wife Lucinda, successful Indiana farmers, arrived in Kansas with their three children in 1857, and their farmstead stood on three stagecoach routes running from Kansas City to Santa Fe in New Mexico Territory. Stagecoaches and horses carried people and mail there until railroads replaced them in the 1870s.