Santa Fe Trail Marker

In March 1909, the Daughters of the American Revolution marked the Boonslick and Santa Fe Trails across Missouri, and in New Franklin a red granite monument marked the end of the Boonslick Trail traversed by Daniel Boone and the beginning of William Becknell's Santa Fe Trail. Its unveiling and dedication took place on May 17, 1909, with prominent Missouri citizens including Governor Elliott W. Major and Ex-Governor Herbert S. Hadley participating, and Mayor W. W. Carpenter accepting it for New Franklin. Brought by rail from the Ozark mountains, the rock monument was three feet thick, eight feet high, six and one half feet across the face, weighed 19,600 pounds, and held a 32x42 inch inscribed bronze tablet in its face. It was unloaded from a Katy railroad car at the south end of Missouri Avenue onto a slide cut from a forked tree, then Otto Biesemeyer and William Klusméyer moved it up the hill on Missouri Avenue with two coal powered Rumley steam engines, using a log about fifteen feet long and thirteen inches in diameter as a double tree. When the slide mired in a sandy spot halfway up the unpaved avenue, the engines pulled in an alternating pattern and zigzagged the load past the sand in less than an hour as a large crowd watched. The monument was set on a concrete base, and the city built a sidewalk crossing the street around it to provide an area for flowers. Attendance was estimated at 1500 to 2000 visitors, and the people of New Franklin and the surrounding vicinity prepared and served an old fashioned dinner at the school building on North Howard Street.

New Franklin, Missouri · United States