Beginning with the Pike's Peak Gold Rush in 1858, a Native American trail along the Smoky Hill River became the shortest route through Kansas and evolved into the Smoky Hill Trail, later used by the Butterfield Overland Despatch, the railroad, and eventually major highways. Forts were established to protect travelers and railroad workers. The Butterfield Overland Despatch ran from Atchison to Denver from 1865 to 1866, passing south of WaKeeney with several rest stations nearby, and it demonstrated the route's viability for continued traffic. In 1867, Native Americans attacked a wagon train carrying a threshing machine to the Mormons in Utah at Bluffton Station, now called Threshing Machine Canyon, and burned the machine, whose shell survives in pieces at the Trego County Historical Society Museum. In 1863, the Union Pacific Railway, Eastern Division, began building west from Kansas City and reached Hays four years later, closely following parts of the Smoky Hill Trail; WaKeeney had a station on the line, and many railroad workers later homesteaded in the area. Renamed the Kansas Pacific Railway in 1869, the line's passenger service along the Smoky Hill Route continued until 1971. In the early automobile era, organized auto trails promoted improved roads, and the Golden Belt Highway, laid out in 1912 from Kansas City to Denver through WaKeeney, became part of the Victory Highway in 1925 and then U.S. Highway 40 in 1926. WaKeeney lay on the south branch of U.S. 40 west of Manhattan, and the highway encouraged businesses such as service stations, cafes, and motels. With the Interstate highway system established in 1956 and Interstate 70 opened through Trego County in 1960 as the first completed section in western Kansas, this corridor became the state's primary east-west route and a major transportation route across the U.S.