A mile northeast is Pawnee Rock, a famous landmark on the Santa Fe Trail. Considered the mid-point of the long road between Missouri and New Mexico. Pawnee Rock was a symbol of challenges overcome. Many early travelers mentioned it in their journals, and many of them scratched their names into its soft surface. Here young Kit Carson, standing guard one dark night in 1826, is said to have shot his own mule, mistaking it for a Pawnee. Perhaps it was his unkind companions who named Pawnee Rock to commemorate the young mans blunder.
Freighters, soldiers, goldseekers, and emigrants admired the rock as they paraded by on the trail. In later years local settlers and railroad builders quarried the rock down to about half its original height. An overlook, monument, and historical signs now grace its reduced summit.
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