This point overlooks the historic Neosho Crossing for "The Old Indian Trail" between Missouri and the Osage buffalo hunting grounds in central Oklahoma. The ford was located about eighty yards above the present dam. Two hundred Union soldiers of the 6th Kansas Cavalry, from Ft Scott, Ks., under the command of Col. J.G. Blunt, collected at this ford to rest their horses and plan their raid on John Mathews' trading post located nine blocks south, September 17, 1861.
After the Civil War, the Osages sold the east twenty five miles of their Kansas reservation to the government, and David Branson purchased the patent to the tract which comprises this park for $1.25 per acre. This landscape was neglected for nearly twenty years while scrub oak and brush flourished and made it useless wilderness. About 1885 a group of eighty far-sighted Oswego housewives concluded that this bluff area could be developed into a park and one of the beauty spots of Kansas. They organized "The Ladies Entertainment Society of Oswego", purchased this 26 acres for $900.00 and raided the money to pay for it by conducting food sales and ice cream socials. The society deeded this park to the City of Oswego in 1901.
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