Metal-Trading Post Gold Filigreed Flower TB

This trackable has the goal to circulate more than five years and to be moved by at least 25 cachers. That is a target rate of five drops per year for five years, or a drop every 73 days.   As of 22-Jul-21 it had survived for 1.7 years and had been moved by 9 cachers, for an average release every 70 days. Keep it moving!

No permission is needed to leave the U.S. While in the U.S., please drop it in a Premium Member only OR a rural cache near a busy trail or road. Do not place it in an urban cache or abandon it at a caching event where there is no security. Transport the bug in the original plastic bag for as long as the bag lasts; the bag keeps the trackable clean, protects the number and prevents tangling with other items. Otherwise, take the trackable anywhere you wish.

While I have lived in Texas for nearly 50 years, I was born and grew to an adult in Kansas.  When I tell someone of my origins, they almost always respond in one of two ways:  “I have been there but I don’t remember much about it” or “that 400 mile drive across the state on Interstate 70 is really boring.”  There is more to the state than that.  The wheat grown there feeds the world, and the people are nice, but I will focus on the sometimes lawless history of the state.

Kansas achieved statehood in 1861, but it was far from civilized.  From 1850 until 1900 the region was a frontier, and at the center of important events in US history:  there was the westward movement of pioneers from Europe and the eastern US and the subsequent conflicts with Native Americans; the Santa Fe Trail crossed the state and the Pony Express and the Oregon Trail passed through a corner; there was a border war because Kansas was a free state and a center of the abolitionist movement, whereas neighboring Missouri was a slave state; and finally the several new railroads were extending westward into hostile territory and furthermore some of the railheads were the destinations of cattle drives from Texas.  Each trackable in this series of metal travel bugs is named for towns with interesting histories (at least to me), some of which have connections to my youth.

Trading Post is an unincorporated community in Linn County.  It is said to be one of the oldest continuously occupied locations in the state.  In 1842 a United States Army fort was built there, but it was soon abandoned. The fort remained until probably at least 1900.  It was used by troops travelling through the area during the American Civil War and a military post was established in 1861 and lasted until summer 1865.  The Battle of Marais des Cygnes was fought here during the American Civil War.  The location derives its name from a French trading post established there about 1825.

The site is also the location of the Marais des Cygnes massacre, occurring on May 19, 1858.  This event is considered the last significant act of violence in Bleeding Kansas prior to the outbreak of the American Civil War.  Charles Hamilton, a Georgia native, had been forced out Kansas by Jayhawkers (abolitionist soldiers).  Hamilton later returned from Missouri with approximately 30 men.  They arrived at Trading Post in the morning and then started back to Missouri.  Along the way they captured 11 Free-Staters, none of whom was armed and, it is said, none of whom had participated in the ongoing violence. Most of the men knew Hamilton and apparently did not realize he meant them harm.

The prisoners were led into a defile, where Hamilton ordered his men to shoot.  He even shot and fired the first bullet himself.  Five men were killed, five were wounded and one other escaped by feigning death.  Hamilton and his gang returned to Missouri.  Only one man was ever prosecuted for the crime. William Griffith of Bates County, Missouri, was arrested in the spring of 1863 and hanged on October 30 of that year.  Charles Hamilton returned to Georgia, where he died in 1880.