Pawnee Rock
Posted by: 
BruceS
N 38° 15.684 W 098° 59.219
14S E 501138 N 4234818
Marker with information about historic landmark along the Santa Fe Trail located just west of the town of Pawnee Rock.
Waymark Code: WMEK6K
Location: Kansas, United States
Date Posted: 06/07/2012
Views: 15
Text of marker:
Pawnee Rock
A mile north east is Pawnee Rock, a famous landmark on the Santa Fe Trail. Considered teh 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 quard 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 commerorate the young man's blunder
Freighters, soldiers, goldseekers, and emigrants admired the rock as they paraded by on the trail. In later years local setters and railroad builders quarried the rock down to about half its original height. An overlook, monument and historical signs now grace its reduced summit.