Aurora – Not long ago, Gordon Davis could scale a small dirt hill in southeastern Aurora and point out marks of history carved into the ground almost 150 years ago by wagon wheels on the Smoky Hill Trail.
Those 140-year-old ruts are gone, wiped away recently either by erosion or from heavy machinery working in the fast-developing region.
Davis hopes a sign on Smoky Hill Road stating the historic significance of the trail will become a lasting reminder of the route that brought thousands of settlers into Denver during the mid-19th century.
“If we can provide a little bit more information to those thousands of people who use that road every day, it might make commuting a little more pleasurable,” he said.
Davis, executive director of the Aurora History Museum, proposed that a Smoky Hill Trail landmark be erected across from the southern entrance of the new Southlands Mall. The sign would stand a grasshopper’s leap from where the old wagon ruts could be seen about a year ago. That was before Smoky Hill Road was widened. The ruts couldn’t be saved anyway, Davis said, because they were on private property.
Nevertheless, the landmark designation would be the first meaningful recognition in Colorado of the Smoky Hill Trail, said Clarice Crowle of the Cherry Creek Valley Historical Society.
“That’s the main thing, something to say you are on the Smoky Hill Trail,” she said.
Crowle has been working on getting the trail recognized by the National Trails System, which protects and officially commemorates historic routes throughout the United States.
“Historically, (the trail) is extremely important,” she said. “We had the Oregon Trail and the Santa Fe Trail, but this one came directly to Denver. … The Smoky Hill Trail was the most direct one, and it was the most dangerous.”
The Smoky Hill Trail, which began in Leavenworth, Kan., according to Kansas Historic Trails, split into three routes at Limon, coming into Denver on what is now East Sixth Avenue, Smoky Hill Road and South Parker Road.
It was shorter than the Oregon Trail or Santa Fe Trail, but it also had fewer water sources and bisected vast Indian hunting grounds, resulting in more attacks, according to “The Smoky Hill Trail,” by Kansas historian Betty Radcliffe Jackson.
Nevertheless, settlers, supply wagons and overland mail services regularly traveled the route from 1850 to 1870, until the Kansas- Pacific Railroad connected Denver to the Eastern United States.
The Aurora Historic Preservation Commission last summer began looking into a landmark site designation.
Davis presented the idea to the City Council at a study session this month. The city’s attorneys were asked to examine whether a sign would impede future development. It won’t, said City Attorney Charlie Richardson. The council will vote whether to approve the sign at its Feb. 6 meeting.
Davis has a bit of personal history invested in the project. His great-grandfather Wilber Fiske Stemmons traveled the trail in the 1860s, on his way from Missouri to Central City – where he failed to strike it rich.
Staff writer Jeremy Meyer can be reached at 303-820-1175 or jpmeyer@denverpost.com.
