SFGT: Black Jack Ruts and Ivan Boyd Prairie
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Difficulty:
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Terrain:
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Size: 
(regular)
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This cache is part of the larger Santa Fe Trail GeoTour: santafetrail.org/geocaching
On a gravel, all-season road. A very short walk to the cache. Must cross road ditch, which can be overgrown. Parking on edge of road, so use caution, or can park across road at Black Jack Battlefield area.
Be sure to visit www.santafetrail.org/geocaching to learn about the PASSPORT ACTIVITY to accompany this Geo Tour. Containers on the Santa Fe National Historic Trail Geo Tour are military ammunition canisters, or Brochure-Holder boxes, with an identifying Santa Fe Trail Association yellow sticker on the top of the box, under the handle and the dark green geocaching.com ID is on the side of the boxes with the information that provides coordinates, who set the cache and who to contact for information. Each cache contains a logbook to sign, a variety of items that provide information about the Santa Fe Trail as well as swag items. If you are participating in the Passport activity, the code word is located on the inside of the box, on the top of the lid and is clearly identified as Code Word. Permission to set caches has been obtained. We ask that all cachers please respect all property at the sites where our caches are set.
The Ivan Boyd Prairie Preserve is located in south Douglas County, near Baldwin, and adjacent to the site of the pre-Civil War battle of Black Jack, 2 June 1856, a battle that happened as a result of the Pottawatomie Massacre and other events. Ivan Boyd was a resident of the town of Baldwin, and was a member of the faculty of Baker University for many years. He was an ardent naturalist and conservationist, and, in rain and snow, could often be seen walking through the countryside he loved so well -- and doing so at an age when most of us much prefer an easy chair and a large-print book. He was particularly fond of children and is beloved by generations of those whom he introduced to the wonders of nature. At his death, nothing seemed more fitting that to dedicate to his memory a tract of the native prairie that few knew or loved so well as he. The narrow swathes of grass that are just a bit lighter in shade than their surroundings mark the wagon tracks of the old Santa Fe trail. During the 1830's and 1840's caravans of great freight wagons, loaded with goods shipped by river to Westport, rumbled across this land on their way to Taos and Santa Fe while flanking guards of United States Army dragoons protected their passage. A couple of months later, they would return, laden with the products of the upper reaches of the Rio Grande. It was not far from here that a band of marauders robbed and murdered don Sánchez, a Mexican national on his way to Westport. Santa Ana, the ruler of Mexico, used the unfortunate event as a pretext for shutting down the Santa Fe trade, an action that soon led to the outbreak of war between Mexico and the United States. The Mexican-American War ended with the United States' acquisition of a vast expanse of land, including the gold and silver mines of California and Nevada. Almost hidden by tall grass, one can find an old marker in the Prairie Preserve. The inscription in the lower right corner of the marker reads "SURVEY 1825." This is a monument erected by Russell Hays in the 1960s to honor the SFT and its early travelers. 1825 was also a landmark year for Kansas in other respects. It was in that year that the United States concluded treaties with the Kanza and Osage tribes by which the resident tribes gave up their lands in eastern Kansas. This great tract was used to create small reservations for the tribes who were to be removed from their lands east of the Mississippi. First came the Shawnees, then the Kickapoos and Pottawatomi, then the river tribes of the Kaskaskia, Peoria, Wea and Piankeshaw, and then the Sac and Fox, fresh from Illinois, where their leaders, Blackhawk and the Prophet, had led them in a vain uprising against the wave of European settlers moving into the Rock River valley.
Additional Hints
(Decrypt)
Va gerryvar va oebpuher obk