In 1831, at a point on the Kansas River where an old Indian trail reached the water's edge, Moses Grinter established the first ferry on the river and became the earliest permanent white settler in the area. His ferry was used extensively by travelers on the Fort Leavenworth-Fort Scott military road and by traders, freighters, and soldiers traveling between the forts or to Santa Fe. Known as Military or Delaware Crossing and sometimes as Secondine, the place became the site of the first non-military post office in Kansas on September 10, 1850. In 1857 Grinter built the large brick house north of the crossing and lived there until his death in 1878, and he and his part Delaware wife were buried in the nearby churchyard. The Union Pacific, Eastern Division, was built through the area in 1863-1864, and in 1869, as the Kansas Pacific, it became the first railroad to reach the western border of the state. The Chouteau family, long prominent in the fur trade, operated posts nearby as early as the 1820s, and Delaware, Wyandot, Munsee, and Shawnee Indians were among Eastern tribes resettled in the area beginning in 1830. Also nearby were the Delaware agency, smithy, and Baptist and Methodist missions, but by the 1870s remnants of these tribes had been removed to reservations in present Oklahoma.
