Trail Campground..To Farm..To Park

In 1857, Newton Ainsworth claimed this land and allowed trail travelers to continue camping here. A decade later, as the railroads moved west and the great overland trails passed into history, camping at Lone Elm ended. Cattle and sheep replaced wagons and oxen teams, the prairie sod was cultivated into crop fields, and water wells were dug with picks and shovels. Over the years, the land was farmed like nearby farms. Lone Elm Park, dedicated in 2005, now occupies this famous quarter section, carrying forward a long-held vision of people including Ainsworth to mark the trails and preserve their stories, so that people can once again gather at Lone Elm. Ainsworth recalled that in May and June 1857 he broke seventy acres of virgin Kansas soil at the Lone Elm Campground, and that on the fourth day of March, 1858, he unloaded lumber to build a ten by eleven foot cabin with the ground for a floor, where his family lived for two years and which he said was the first cabin erected in that part of the county.

Olathe, Kansas · United States