Missouri - West

Located just off of 3-Trails Crossing Memorial Highway in the heart of the historic 3-Trails Corridor, Trailside Center provides resources for trail and civil war aficionados, historians, and the Kansas City community. Few visitors realize that the communities that established in this area in the early 1830s were situated at the western edge of the United States until Kansas Territory was established in 1854. 

Leading from Independence to Raytown to the southwest on the Independence route of the trails(today's Blue Ridge Boulevard), modern-day travelers reach Raytown, Missouri. Raytown was born in 1849 from blacksmith William Ray’s hammer and anvil. The story of early day trail travel is told in this modern-day bedroom community’s museum, situated directly on the historic Santa Fe Trail.

The Rice-Tremonti Home, along with Aunt Sophie's Cabin, has borne witness to more than 170 years of American history. This site was first settled in 1836 by Archibald Rice and family. They built the still standing, Gothic-Revival farmhouse in 1844, a Santa Fe Trail homestead. It served as a jumping off point for emigrants on the Oregon and California trails and is mentioned in many emigrant diaries as a popular campsite.

This 2,000-foot trail segment, located on the property of the Hickman Mills School District, begins just northeast of the district’s administration building (at 9000 Old Santa Fe Road, near Eastern Avenue).

This picturesque valley was the campsite of the infamous 1846 Donner Party…and thousands of other emigrants during the heyday of the overland trail system. A greenway across the property has been developed as part of a larger, two-mile-long trail project.

The historic trails passed through this area in the field that is directly across from the National Frontier Trails Museum. Evidence of the trails can still be seen in the field in the form of swales, which marks the exact route used by emigrants as they traveled westward. The museum is currently temporarily located at 416 W. Maple Ave., Independence, MO 64050.

Travelers on the Oregon, California, and Santa Fe trails passed through what is now Schumacher Park as they journeyed through the prairie of the great plains. They passed through the south end of the park in an east to west direction during the mid-1800s. Today, no traces of these trails (no ruts or swales) remain in the park, but the park does provide a good example of how this part of Kansas appeared in the 19th century.

Wieduwilt Swales are the grassed-over evidence of three historic trails that passed through the area, the Santa Fe, California, and Oregon. Thousands of wagons, carts, livestock, and people traveled on these trails, which created ruts and left deep depressions in the earth. After the traffic stopped, vegetation slowly reclaimed the muddy and barren ground of the trails, creating the swales that are still visible today.

Mountain man Jim Bridger, who settled in Jackson County on a large farm north of New Santa Fe, also owned a mercantile store in Westport where all Santa Fe Trail traffic had been steadily passing since Westport was founded in 1834. Next door to Bridger’s, a grandson of famed mountain man Daniel Boone, Albert Gallatin Boone, had owned a trading post at one of Kansas City’s most historic street corners and in one of its most historic buildings.

Just down the road from the original Santa Fe Trail route, the Alexander Majors home was the western outpost for many military freight caravans on the trail. Visit the home to learn about westward expansion and the largest overland freighting company in the 1850’s.