For over three decades starting in 1827, Elm Grove Campground, one mile east of near the bridge on Cedar Creek, was an important frontier camp site. Thousands of Santa Fe traders, Oregon and California emigrants, missionaries, mountain men, soldiers and '49ers camped at Elm Grove including such frontier notables as John C Fremont, William Bent, Tom Fitzpatrick, Francis Parkman, and Philip St. George Cooke.
Elm Grove Campground, originally named caravan grove, began in 1827 as a result of the Sibley survey of the Santa Fe Trail. Sibley was seeking a more direct route through present day Johnson County, bypassing Lone Elm Campground, known then as Round Grove, which was 2 ? miles southeast of Elm Grove on the same Cedar Creek. These two campgrounds were often mistaken for each other.
Elm Grove was often used on the first or second night out of Westport. OnJune 2, 1841, Richard L. Wilson, bound for Santa Fe, recorded in his diary "...just at sunset on the second, we descended a precipitous declivity to a place of which nothing remained but the name Elm Grove, and one solitary logan of a stricken tree 'Tom mark where an Elm grove had been.' A beautiful rivulet bubbled forth from the base of the hill, and we wound our way down, we spied a single campfire... of an old Mexican hunter."
In that same year the Bidwell-Bartleson party, the first emigrant wagon train to California, came through Elm Grove, as did a portion of the 'Great Migration' to Oregon in 1843. The Mexican War brought Laclede Rangers and other frontier military units through Elm Grove Campground in 1846-48. Many '49ers seeking California gold came through Elm Grove as well.
By the mid 1850s the stagecoach from Westport crossed at Cedar Creek, and by 1857 David P. Hougland had bought the land and raised a cabin at Elm Grove. The property remains with the Hougland family today.
This is a part of your American Heritage. Honor it, protect it, preserve it for you children.
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