The Santa Fe Trail began in 1821 when William Becknell and a small group of men from Franklin, Missouri, followed a route west to Santa Fe, then part of Mexico. This first successful trading party quickly opened the trail to many more trading and government survey expeditions along a new international highway of commerce. These early expeditions brought not only trade but also more people, new settlements, protective forts, and cultural change to the West. Fort Leavenworth, built in 1827 just 35 miles northwest of this location, reflected the growing need for protection, while new towns such as Westport in 1834 provided outfitters, hotels, grocers, and other services for travelers heading west. By the 1840s, the trail passed local Methodist, Baptist, and Friends missions to the Shawnee Indians, and wagons bound for Oregon and California also began their journey west along it. By 1854, surveyors were establishing the U.S. Rectangular Land Survey System in anticipation of Kansas statehood, and an 1857 map showed the fork in the trail, including the campsite at Sappling Grove noted in George Sibley's 1827 government survey.
