From 1821 until the late 1860s, the Santa Fe Trail ran about two hundred yards south of here. A westbound wagon caravan on the road to Santa Fe in the 1860s would have left Independence, Missouri, about three weeks earlier, with Hispanic and Anglo drivers keeping oxen and mules moving at a steady pace of one and one-half miles an hour. This point was almost halfway along the seven hundred eighty mile journey. Walnut Creek crossing lay sixteen miles back up the road, where travelers had camped the previous day, and Fort Larned stood some fourteen miles west-southwest of here. The route remained a major commercial highway for at least one hundred seventy-five years, as modern traffic on U.S. fifty-six Highway continued hauling goods both east and west along the same corridor.