The shared corridor of the Santa Fe, Oregon, and California trails once passed by Hart Grove Creek, where travelers stopped for water, wood, and a night's rest. Within a day's walk to the west was the Missouri state line and, until 1854, Indian lands that were home to the Shawnee and Delaware tribes. In 1839, Obadiah Oakley recorded traveling to the west side of Hart Grove Creek on the Santa Fe Trail beyond Independence near Missouri's western boundary, noting a mostly timber country with scattered farms. In 1846, Hiram O. Miller, traveling with the Donner-Reed Party, camped at Heart Grove near the Indian line. Beginning in 1820, the Santa Fe Trail served as a road of commerce and travel between Missouri and Santa Fe for traders moving east and west, and after New Mexico was added to the United States in 1848 at the end of the Mexican-American War, it remained an international road through El Camino Real to Mexico City for freighting, stagecoach travel, and mail service until the railroad reached Santa Fe in 1880. The Oregon and California trails also carried people west from the late 1820s onward, and an estimated 300,000 fur traders, missionaries, settlers, and goldseekers followed these routes in search of fertile Oregon farmland or California gold fields, though many instead faced failure, hardship, or death.
