Santa Fe Trail Sites Added To Historical Registery

A half-dozen segments of the Santa Fe Trail in Kansas are now on the National Register of Historic Places.

The Kansas Historical Society announced Wednesday that sites in Marion and Morton counties were placed on the list in April. Kansas now has slightly more than 1,300 places on the register.

The 1,200-mile Santa Fe Trail stretched from Missouri across Kansas, Colorado and Oklahoma into New Mexico. The historical society says that before 1846, it served mainly as a trade route between the Missouri and Rio Grande rivers.

Five of the segments added to the National Register lie in the Cimarron National Grassland within Morton County, in far southwest Kansas. The sixth is the French Frank’s Ranch segment in Morris County, located in east-central Kansas.