Mormon emigrants traveling the Fort Riley-Fort Kearny Military Road in the mid-1850’s camped at Mormon Springs near the base of a sandstone bluff on Ash Creek, about 1090 feet from this monument. The soft stone became a written record of their names and dates of their arrival. The inscriptions have been lost through erosion and vandals. By the 1930’s, all that remained wa a carving of a wagon wheel.
The southern route of the Mormon Trail followed the Santa Fe Trail from Westport Missouri to 110 Mile Creek near the present –day Scranton, Kansas, then northwest to Fort Riley and on north to the Oregon Trail.
From Mormon Springs, the trail turned to cross Mill Creek, about eight miles west of Washington, Kansas, then followed Bowman Creek to the Nebraska border where it joined the Oregon Trail near Hebron, Nebraska. The Military Road and the Mormon Train, main arteries of settlements and commerce in territorial Kansas, were the first routes to like the Santa Fe and Oregon Trail.