The Overland Trails

Historic frontier trails cut through the territory now known as Merriam. Hundreds of thousands of people emigrated to the western frontiers along the Oregon and California Trails. The Santa Fe, Oregon, and California Trails all shared a route in the Kansas City metropolitan area, the only place in the United States where this occurred. In the Kansas City area, the Santa Fe Trail had two routes coming off the Missouri River, one from Westport and one from Independence, and the Westport route ran southwest through modern northeast Johnson County, with one branch coursing south near Merriam’s eastern border. Two historic trails ran directly through Merriam, the California Road and the Fort Leavenworth Military Road. The California Road was originally a trail that headed west through the lands of the Shawnee, and it came into prominent use in the 1850’s when the dangers of the Border War drove emigrant traffic destined for Oregon and California onto this road. The California Road joined the Oregon-California Trail near Lawrence and ran west through Merriam, south of modern day Johnson Drive. The Fort Leavenworth Military Road was created in 1837 as part of a route the federal government had designated as the boundary line of the permanent Indian frontier. Running from Fort Snelling in Minnesota to Fort Towson in Oklahoma, the road was used to move troops between Leavenworth and Fort Scott. The Fort Leavenworth Military Road crossed southeast through present day Merriam, where travelers stopped along Turkey Creek, then continued to the eastern edge of Indian Territory and south to Fort Scott. Thousands of emigrants and merchants traveled over these roads in loaded wagons that cut into the earth as they rode west, and the faded signatures of those passages can still be found across the Kansas City area. In 1846, Francis Parkman described stopping along Turkey Creek in Merriam while traveling west on the California Road. The Santa Fe Trail was primarily a commerce route used by traders who traveled both to and from Santa Fe, while the Oregon-California Trails primarily served as one-way trails for emigrants relocating to the West.

Merriam, Kansas · United States