The Santa Fe Trail spanned nine hundred miles of the Great Plains between the United States in Missouri and Mexico in Santa Fe, serving as a major commercial route between two countries as well as a path for frontier military movement and emigration to the West. For sixty years it formed one thread in a web of international trade routes and influenced economies as far away as New York and London. After the Civil War ended in 1865, America’s industrial energies helped drive railroad development westward, and expanding rail lines gradually shortened the trail until they replaced it in 1880. The trail later became recognized for its importance in United States history, and in 1987 Congress designated it a national historic trail. Along its route are surviving and interpreted sites including Lanesfield School, built in 1869 in the former mail stop town of Lanesfield; Black Jack ruts and prairie, where the pre-Civil War Battle of Black Jack took place; the grave of U.S. dragoon Private Samuel Hunt of Kentucky, who died on the trail in 1835; Council Grove and the Neosho River Crossing; the Lost Spring campsite and water source; the trail ruts at Tampa Cemetery where teams and wagons crossed Muddy Creek; Cottonwood Crossing, a difficult river crossing and campsite; and a Marion County auto tour route that approximates the historic trail.