Nothing like history conferences to tug old knowledge from the brain’s dark recesses and shake it up with fresh concepts.
Recently, Trego County Historical Museum hosted the annual Smoky Hill Trail Conference. Organizers assembled stellar presenters to inform, entertain, and intrigue member’s interests.
I loved all the presentations, but one literally caught my eye. Denver historian Wes Brown has spent a lifetime collecting old and rare maps, several pertinent to this region and the trail that crosses it. He shared these, supplementing his visuals with details regarding development of what became Colorado and Kansas.
Those original maps paired with fellow attendee Jim Mayhew’s map tied into an article I wrote long ago. Add a recent trip across western Kansas and eastern Colorado and my overfull brain reeled as history leapt to life. Anyone who finds Kansas boring needs to study it and compare old maps to their current atlas.
The article mentioned focused on how the Arkansas River that flows across southern Kansas marked an international border. At the time I wrote that piece, this concept surprised several readers.
Originally, this waterway separated U.S. territory from Spain, which acquired the region the Arkansas flowed across as a result of the Adams-Onis Treaty (aka the Florida Purchase Treaty) of 1819. This agreement added Florida to U.S. territory and established an official boundary. It designated the Arkansas River as part of the border between America and New Spain. Spain, intent on supplementing its coffers, protected trade in her new world territory and discouraged entrepreneurs willing to travel from Missouri to Santa Fe.
In short time, Mexico declared independence from Spain and successfully won the resulting war in 1821. Mexico encouraged cross-border trade relationships that made the Santa Fe Trail a successful exchange route beginning in 1821 with William Becknell’s delivery of goods.
While this victory over Spain changed Mexico’s government and its trade relationships, the established border remained until 1846, when the U.S. defeated Mexico in the Mexican-American War and annexed Texas.
While I’d read text books that depicted modern illustrations of this border, seeing nearly 200-year-old maps with a sharply-defined river and its contributing streams combined with a different era’s terminology made it real versus theoretical.
One of those 19th century maps identified Territorial Kansas, revealing that it extended from the Missouri River to the Continental Divide. It showed physical attributes like waterways and mountain ranges but unlike today’s maps, few human settlements existed. As a result, this map’s clearly labeled Bent’s New Fort located north of the Arkansas River stood out like a beacon on the prairie.
After we recently visited that still isolated region, I reflected on how minor details like the Kansas-Nebraska Act and statehood prevented Old and New Bent’s Forts from becoming Kansas historical destinations. This map validated such thoughts. I also considered how including the Front Range with its traffic, cities, and industry would alter the world perception of western Kansas.
Seeing some of Mr. Brown’s map collection and listening to his presentation breathed life into history. It demonstrated how primary sources vividly link present to past. The people who created these documents are long dead, but their work lives when historians share.
