Santa Fe Trail Research
"Fort Larned Old Guard"
1859 Indian Head Front 1859 Indian Head Back
Preserves Cheyenne/Sioux Indian Village Site of 1867!!
Best Viewed on a Smart Phone in a Trail Rut!
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Warner Ruts ~*~ ~*~
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Warner Ruts ~*~ ~*~
The Santa Fe Trail got its start in 1821, with an advertisement in the Missouri Intelligencer by William Becknell, seeking men willing to join and invest in a trading expedition to the west. Becknell started on this expedition September 1, 1821 from the Franklin. & Arrow Rock area of Missouri, ending at the Plaza in Santa Fe, New Mexico in November of the same year. His first trip was made with pack animals, the next trip to trade in 1822, Becknell used wagons. The Trail soon became a highway of trade & supply, connecting the southwest area of Santa Fe, New Mexico with eastern trade centers.
Larry & Carolyn Mix
Santa Fe Trail Research Dot Com
"Faye Anderson Award"
January 14, 2001
Larry E. Mix With AwardWell here we go from just a little bit south the Santa Fe Trail, but you can almost see it from here. I've lived in Kansas all my life on or very near the Santa Fe Trail. I was born in Great Bend, Kansas in 1939. Lived in Hoisington for a short time before my parents decided to move to Great Bend. They bought a home in the southeast part of town in 1945. My Dad always said that the Santa Fe Trail ran across our property. We did fiind an ox shoe one time. We lived about three block north of the Arkansas River. It is possible that the older trail, when the Walnut Creek Crossing was south of US 56, could have ran across the property.
I went to St. Rose grade school, then on to Great Bend High School. During all these years I can say I never had any interest in the Trail. After High School I went to the Service. After I got out, one day I decided to go dove hunting along the Arkansas river. While hunting, I shot myself in the foot. This ended the Service part of my life. Moved to Dodge City, Kansas & found a job at a typewriter repair shop. I had been doing a little of this kind of work during school. After this I got a job at McCoy Scaggs, the Ford Dealer in town. While in Dodge I chased a lovely lady until she caught me. We got married in December of 1960 & have been together ever since. We moved to Great Bend, Kansas for several years then to Kinsley, Kansas. While at Kinsley, Kansas we lived about two mile north of Ardell, Kansas. The Big Coon Creek Crossing & Fort Coon were just a mile east of us. The Trail ran across the south east corner of the section we lived on.
A Short History of Our Website This Santa Fe Trail Adventure & research of the Santa Fe Trail began when we lived in Edwards County, Kansas in 1965 two miles north of the ghost town of Ardell. History & books became a passion after Larry bought his first book about the Santa Fe Trail for his wife Carolyn. The book was a first edition of "Dodge City The Cowboy Capital" by Robert M. Wright. Larry bought the book because it told first hand, the history that happened where Carolyn was born & lived until we married in 1960 at Dodge City. After getting the book home, between the pages of this book we found a collection of hand drawn maps & hand written notes about the Santa Fe Trail on a microfiche.The company Larry worked for at the time, Fravel Motor Company, Kinsley, Kansas had an old reader that we used to copy these maps to modern day maps. After this was done Larry began searching for the sites that were talked about in the text. The maps proved to be quite accurate, being in the general area anyway. A good friend of Larry's worked for a company that could take this microfiche & make them into hard copy maps, so we let him do just that. He brought them back to us one day & about a month later he passed away. He wouldn't take any pay for doing this for us, he said just take me out to some of the sites. We never did get to go out together & explore the Trail, but we think about him every time we use them. From these maps & notes it was discovered that the Santa Fe Trail crossed the southeast quarter of the property we were renting at the time, less than a half mile from where we were living. This location was just one mile west of Big Coon Creek Crossing & Fort Coon, five miles west of Kinsley, Kansas.
These maps became the backbone for the research to find & record the historic sites of the Santa Fe Trail as we found them. Since this first book the collection of maps, local, Kansas history & Santa Fe Trail books has grown & keeps growing in 2020.
For many years along with Carolyn we made trips up & down the Trail exploring the many places we read & researched. Any place we went, some time during the trip we would end up at a trail site. This left the two of us to explore on our own. We have made two complete trips from Franklin, Missouri to Santa Fe, New Mexico & have been to most of the major sites along the way. We have logged thousands of miles just along the Santa Fe Trail in the State of Kansas. We are planning another complete trip of the Trail in the very near future. Every time we go out along the Trail we find something new.
Along about 1992, we heard about the push to get the Santa Fe Trail off the ground & into the history of the nation where it should be. There were Chapters being formed all along the Trail. We found out from some old friends in Pawnee County, that there was going to be a Chapter of the Santa Fe Trail in Edwards & Pawnee County area of Kansas. We went to the next meeting & joined the Wet/Dry Routes Chapter. in 1992.. Later we were awarded the Faye Anderson Award & became a life member. We helped with many projects the chapter thought up. They all were hard work but very interesting in nature. One of the largest & rewarding projects was the Directory of Santa Fe Trail Sites book that Daved Clapsadle produced. During this time we did just about everything, setting markers, cleaning weeds, taking photos, helping a young man get his Eagle Badge & making sure the GPS reading & mileage in the Directory were on target. We have had several people tell us that they put in the reading in their GPS unit & followed the trail any where it went in our area.
In 1992, a medical condition forced Larry to quit work. Rather than go crazy sitting around doing nothing, Larry thought he would try to keep busy rather than worry about his condition. Larry started to gather & sort the information, putting it on the first used computer he bought in Great Bend, Kansas. This first computer was doing the job, but it wasn't how Larry had envisioned it. This is when Larry decided to get some professional help & took it to our local computer shop & traded this "dinosaur" as Mac Zimmerman called it, for a later model & started the job over with the latest programs.
Entering information into the computer was very slow because up until this time Larry hadn't even turned one on. Typing, for me was last done in high school in 1957. There was another little deal to over come, nine fingers! This later computer did the job the way it had been pictured in Larry's mind. The information could be accessed quick & easy, a lot easier than the stacks of papers & books that were in a dozen different places around the house. There were many mistakes & changes. Some day I expected my old computer to put up a screen that said; "Make up your dam mind" but it never has, so far anyway. I guess it just puts up with the many changes this old guy can come up with.
Then came a set back after upgrading to a second computer. It was found that transfering information from one computer to the other wouldn't work. If we entered data on our new computer with all the newer programs, the information couldn't be read on an older one with older or different programs. Research into this for someone that knew nothing about this type of stuff was difficult to say the least. After looking & just plain common sense told me that it needed to be put into something that could be read by any computer. HTML is an international language to all browsers that are on all computers. Make it simple & any browser will be able to read it. This was the solution to the problem & this is how it's been done. All the research information has been entered as web-pages on my computer.
In 1993, I decided to put up a website. It started out as a personal site, with information about our grandson that was setting track & field records across the state. He still holds some state records. On the site we put some Santa Fe Trail information about the Wet/Dry Routes Chapter, the first Chapter along the trail to have a website by the way. This first website was on Geocities. The website was left up until January 1, 2001, it hadn't been updated for some time & at that time it was deleted & is no more.
Over the years we've been associated with the Wet/Dry Routes, we've spent countless hours up & down this part of the Santa Fe Trail researching, installing markers, taking pictures, cleaning weeds from Lyons to Garden City to Hays, Kansas. We were also major contributing member of the team that researched & compiled the data for the Chapter publication A Directory of Santa Fe Trail Sites in 1999. We bought a GPS unit & mapping software for our computer & did all of the GPS mapping for this publication, this page is an off shoot of that project & we got recognition for using the Microsoft Research Maps website in our search for Santa Fe Trail sites.
In 1994, Larry & Carolyn volunteered to transport the displays the Chapter made, to several locations around the central part of Kansas. In the time we were doing this, we traveled over 2,000 miles setting up the displays & answering questions at several locations. At the time there were two displays. One of the displays traces the evolution of transportation on the Santa Fe Trail. It featured commentary & artifacts related to the various beasts of burden used to transport trade goods to & from New Mexico. Included in the display are a pack saddle, harness hames, a stay chain, ox shoes, & American ox yoke, a Mexican ox yoke, & an ox chain. The original traveling display portrayed the fifty-nine markers set along the five separate routes of the Trail between Larned & Dodge City, Kansas. These displays are now housed at the Edwards County Museum in Kinsley, Kansas.
Also in 1994 Larry assisted in helping a young man by the name of Matt Waldren of Troop 238 in Lewis, Kansas to complete an "Eagle Service Award" project. The project was the compilation of a directory of sites marked by the Wet/Dry Routes Chapter in Pawnee, Edwards, & Ford Counties in Kansas. In addition to the name & addresses of the property owners on whose land each marker is placed, the legal description of each site is noted. The directory was placed in the Santa Fe Trail Center, Fort Larned National Historic Site, And the Kansas State Historical Society for future references.
For several years we collected & archived information on the Santa Fe Trail, along with other history about the area we lived in at the time. Over the years there were people that kept telling me to put it into some form, some kind of a filing system so it could be found in a timely manner. From 1964 to about 1994 Larry had collected mountains of information. It was found on everything from a napkin to just a simple piece of paper & photos of all kinds relating to the Trail. Most of the text was photocopied from articles that were found at research centers across the length of the Santa Fe Trail. There is even information on VCR tapes. The video camera was a research tool that we used on trips to where ever we went.
In 1998, St. John, Kansas got its own Internet service provider. At that time the Wet/Dry Routes website was moved to stjohnks.net, only it still was a secondary page on our website. It stayed this way for about a year. When our internet bill came due, we went down & talked to Mac Zimmerman about a name change & new address to put the Santa Fe Trail website on as the number one page. Mac & I put our heads together & decided that the new address would be; "www.stjohnks.net/santafetrail/." The Santa Fe Trail part of the website became the main page. It had been clear from the start that there are a lot of people out there from around the world interested in the Old Santa Fe Road & we are only interested in getting information to them. This website was averaging about 100 hits per day.
In 1998 we brought the Santa Fe Trail Center in Larned, Kansas, to the internet. They are the National Headquarters for the Santa Fe Trail & the Official Santa Fe Trail History Museum in the State of Kansas. We created a complete new site with pictures for the museum, but after they changed ISP we were no longer able to update the site, the new company wouldn't let us in.
In 1999 Larry & Carolyn's web site was selected as one of the Net's finest & informative. It is included in StudyWebTM's listing of educational links.
"StudyWeb is one of the Internet's premier sites for educational resources for students & teachers. Since 1996, our expert reviewers have scoured the Internet to select only the finest sites to be included in StudyWebTM's listing of educational links. Inclusion in StudyWebTM will increase your exposure & attract new visitors to your site: our reviews have been featured on Webcrawler Select, The Lycos Top 5%, Education World & many others, & StudyWebTM updates are provided to media & educational resources around the world."
Of course, we already knew this because at the time it was being used by several schools around the world as a study site for History of Westward Expansion. The most visitors to the site are in this order; #1 is .com, #2 is .net, #3 is .us & #4 is .edu, which is US Educational. This is a fact that we are the most proud of. The fact that we just might be a small part of shaping a young person into being the next true Santa Fe Trail Historian like Mac Simmons or Leo & Bonita Oliva Wagon Tracks Editor & book author. How about an in-depth researcher for a project like the Directory of Santa Fe Trail Sites! These young people are the future of the Santa Fe Trail!
Along about this time Leo & Bonita Oliva gave us permission to put on our web site the Index to Wagon Tracks Volume 1 to 10, 1986/1996. This is one of the best research tools for the Santa Fe Trail there is & a lot of people do use it. We've tried for years to get the Historic content of the Wagon Tracks Quarterly on our site so the Index can really be used to its fullest, it hasn't happened as of yet anyway & doubt it ever will. Most of the questions we receive from the Wagon Tracks Index are given information on ordering & directed to the Last Chance Store for back issues of Wagon Tracks.
September of 1999 the Santa Fe Trail Symposium was held at Council Grove, Kansas, Larry E. Mix was given the "Award of Merit" for our significant contribution to the Preservation, Protection & Promotion of the Santa Fe Trail & developing & maintaining the Santa Fe Trail Research website.
This Oval Santa Fe Trail Sign is in a
Private Collection in Central Kansas!!
Yee Haaaaw!!!!Something we had been looking for came true for Larry & Carolyn. We've always wanted one of the Oval Santa Fe Trail signs & now we have one. With only about 100 of these signs put on Kansas schools along the Santa Fe Trail in 1948, never in our life time did we think we would even find one, let alone to buy it & have this sign in our collection of Santa Fe Trail items. Now we have six! No they are not for sale. They are being preserved in our collection for the future to enjoy. Some day they will be given to a museum or historic site along the trail that don't have one.
May-June of 2000, the sign above was dropped into our lives with an email requesting information on oval signs. Which we answered with all the information we had on the signs. Then along came this email several months later.
Subject: In a rut.
Date: Tue, 16 May 2000 (EDT)
Would you be interested in purchasing my oval marker? E-mail me with a bid. E-mails will be answered. For a photo, send a self addressed stamped envelope to. Sue, New Jersey. I will try to post a picture on the Internet.
Thanks,
SueWe were the high bidder & our sign was delivered on June 10, 2000.
Some people along the trail don't understand the scope of what to preserve. Any historic item no matter what it is, be it a trail rut or a sign, should be in the hands of someone that enjoys it, & will keep it safe & protect that piece of history. Most of the Oval Signs we have on our site have stories about being found in the trash, or buried somewhere. We have a story of one being cut to cover the hole for a transfer case on a pickup with a picrure to prove it. Plowing a trail rut, trail crossing under for a few acres of ground, that is total destruction of that historic item. The Wet/Dry Routes Chapter marked a half dozen or so that this happened to. A prime example of preservation is the story of the Frizzle Family & their ownership of the Fort Larned National Historic Site. The page we have on Santa Fe Trail Oval Signs, we believe to be the most up to date information there is out their on location & history of them.
August of 2000 our website took on another new look & name, same address. It became the "Santa Fe Trail Research Site" The Great Highway of Commerce. This was in preparation for the addition of seven new web-sites, Wet/Dry Routes Chapter, the first Chapter of the Santa Fe Trail to have a website on the Internet on January 28, 1998. The Quivira Chapter came on line February 15, 2001, Fort Dodge/Dodge City Chapter on March 1, 2001, Wagon Bed Spring Chapter on May 1, 2001, Missouri River Outfitters Chapter on September 1, 2002, Flint Hills Chapter on March 25, 2003. On April 14, 2004 the Cottonwood Crossing Chapter joined our plan to have all chapters along the Santa Fe Trail have a web sites for information on their area. At one time we had seven of the twelve Chapters of the Santa Fe Trail on the St. John Kansas Server. Our only goal was to further promote these sections of the Santa Fe Trail with new research material from the people who know the area, the people who live within these sections of the Trail.
November of 2000, we put up a site for Keith Chadd, well known history buff & teacher of Dodge City, Kansas. This site was all about Historic Maps of Ford, Edwards & Kiowa Counties in Kansas. Keith had researched the historic information about these counties & marked them on maps. Keith passed away in 2008, but his memory lives on. Joyce, his wife passed away in 2011. Guess Keith took his map site with him as it is not on the internet anymore.
January 14, 2001, Larry E. Mix of St. John, Kansas, was awarded the Faye Anderson Award by the Wet/Dry Routes Chapter of the Santa Fe Trail at the winter meeting, in Kinsley, Kansas. Although the only name that appears on the plaque is Larry E. Mix, I share this with my most prized possession, this being my best friend & wife of Dodge City, Kansas, Carolyn L. (Thomas) Mix. We do this site as a team.
Kansas Historical Quarterly 1931 to 1977
September of 2001 Larry & Carolyn took on another project. This one was to help the Kansas State Historical Society transcribe the Kansas Historical Quarterlies & put them on the net for all to enjoy. We did 18 articles that were about the Santa Fe Trail.They would be happy to have you join this remarkable group of volunteers putting the Quarterlies on their website so all can read about the Rich History of the State of Kansas You can help! Like all our projects, this is purely a volunteer effort. They need many people to help scan or type these articles into electronic files for presentation on the Internet. Participating is easy, all you need to do is check it out with the link to their site!
I got the scare of my life in 2003 when I got an email from Microsoft asking for a time they could call me. The only thing I could think of was a law suit over the way I was using their Microsoft TerraServer maps. I finally broke down & gave them a time. All they wanted to do was praise me on the work we were doing with their maps. Also they wanted to write a couple articles about how & why we were using the maps & put the articles in their company newsletter. What a relief, no jail time or law suit!
January 2003, Microsoft took notice of how our site was using their photos & links to their Microsoft Research Maps site. "This is a really fascinating story about how a retired mechanic figured out how he could find missing sections of the historic Santa Fe Trail using the Microsoft Research Maps, a satellite imaging system developed by Microsoft Research. Some of the wagon trail ruts are still visible from space but hard to find at ground level." John Spilker of Microsoft Research Dot Com stated: "I had the pleasure of taking with Larry Mix last year several times. He has devoted an incredible amount of his life to researching the trail & loves to share his research with Trail Buffs, grade schools, high schools & college students. After he discovered the Web would enable him to publish to a very broad audience, he learned HTML on his own & built a Santa Fe Trail Web site. On top of this, he doesn't even like computers. There's a lot of really bright people at Microsoft Research, but I doubt anyone there could have made the discovery that Larry did." & here's a great piece of advice from Larry: "My wife & I are planning another trip along the complete length of the trail in the very near future. I hope that we'll see you in a rut along the way. Don't forget to bring your laptop, & now Smart Phone" Larry said.
Some Santa Fe Trail sites & Ruts can be only seen with the USGS aerial photos as there are no roads to get to the sites or they are on private property. The later part of February of 2004, Research at Microsoft Dot Com did a feature article on how the Santa Fe Trail Research Site used the tool "Microsoft Research Maps" to explain & see the Santa Fe Trail. We also got a link for another article Microsoft did on how Microsoft Research Maps was put together & how it works. It's just nice to be noticed by the most successful business in the world. "Microsoft"! Larry & Carolyn of the Santa Fe Trail Research Site, "Thank you!" for this honor."
"John Spilker - Family Technology" Exploring History From Space
Cool things that you & your family can do on the Internet
Wednesday, June 30, 2004
This is a really fascinating story about how a retired mechanic figured out how he could find missing sections of the historic Santa Fe Trail using the Microsoft TerraServer, a satellite imaging system developed by Microsoft Research.Some of the wagon trail ruts are still visible from space but hard to find at ground level.
John had the pleasure of taking with Larry Mix last year. He has devoted an incredible amount of his life to researching the trail & loves to share his research with high school & college students.
After he discovered the Web would enable him to publish to a very broad audience, he learned HTML on his own & built a Santa Fe Trail Web site. On top of this, he doesn't even like computers, they are always right.
Wanting to get more information I went to the people working on TerraServer. John was told to get in touch with Larry Mix in Kansas, he useing the technology, developed by Tom Barclay & Jim Gray from the San Francisco lab, to follow the path of the Santa Fe Trail. Larry Mix, a history buff in Kansas, has used Microsoft TerraServer Map images to follow the Santa Fe Trail from Franklin, Missouri to Santa Fe, New Mexico. With these maps & with his research he discovered the Original Dry Route of the Santa Fe Trail, which runs from southwest of Garfield, Kansas to the Campsite west of Dodge City, Kansas called "The Caches." There's a lot of really bright people at Microsoft Research, but I doubt anyone there could have made the discovery that Larry did.
And here's a great piece of advice from Larry: "My wife & I are planning another trip along the complete length of the trail in the very near future. I hope that we'll see you in a rut along the way. Don't forget to bring your laptop, Larry said.
John Spilker
EditorApril 1, 2003, the Santa Fe Trail Research Site became the Official Santa Fe Trail website at their board meeting at Trinidad, Colorado. On September 1, 2003 we gave that job up going back to just providing Santa Fe Trail information to the world.
May 3, 2003 at the annual meeting of the Fort Larned Old Guard we became the Official Fort Larned Old Guard website. We have posted on our site all the Old Guards Newsletters, "Outpost" that we have in our files. There are some missing & would like to fill those blank spots. If you should happen to have any of the missing newsletters please let us know or mail copies of them to us. Outpost has some of the best historic information to be found on the net today about Fort Larned, Kansas. We are very honored to have this bestowed upon us & our site!
January 10, 2004, another dream came through. The Directory of Santa Fe Trail Sites, researched, published & written by a charter member of the Wet/Dry Routes Chapter, David Clapsaddle, his & the chapters work was added to our site. This doubled the size of our site on the Internet. A Directory of Santa Fe Trail Sites & Auto Tour are included in this major research & marking project. The Wet/Dry Routes Chapter has always been the leading force along the Santa Fe Trail with all their on going projects of interpretation & marking of the Old Santa Fe Road. This project is the most researched & complete survey of any section of the Santa Fe Trail today. It covers from Lyons, Kansas to Cimarron, Kansas, & from Fort Hays to Fort Dodge, on the Fort Hays-Fort Dodge Road.
Directory of Santa Fe Trail Sites has been updated & added to over time with maps, site photos, aerial photo's, GPS readings, driving instructions & other historic data researched & collected by the history buffs who make up the Wet/Dry Routes Chapter of the Santa Fe Trail in Central Kansas. This research project started in 1989 when the Chapter began to mark the Fort Hays/Fort Dodge Road at ten locations along it's route. 205+ sites have been marked all together over this area. The Chapter is adding an Auto Tour Guide to be used if you wish to visit the 205+ sites the Chapter marked. The Directory of Santa Fe Trail Sites {out of print} project is the most ambitious & complete marking of any section of the Santa Fe Trail undertaken in this century by any organization.
January 28, 2004 the Great Bend Tribune did an article about the placing of the Directory of Santa Fe Trail Sites Book on the Santa Fe Trail Research Site of St. John, Kansas. The Larned Tiller & Toiler did a front page article on our site & the Directory of Santa Fe Trail Sites book. The Dodge City Daily Globe put a link to the Santa Fe Trail Research Site in their Adventures Magazine 2004 edition, to help tourists who come to the area tour southwest Kansas & the Santa Fe Trail.
The day we got this project on the World Wide Web, I sat there & was wondering just "why" this would be good to put on the Internet other then some real good Santa Fe Trail information. Then I got to thinking about the day you could take a laptop, or one of those smart phones or any other device to use our site while you were walking in a trail rut. That day is here & now! As of Friday, February 26, 2004 we have been working real hard to convert our site so it can be viewed on the internet & also your Smart Phone! We hope to have it finished in two weeks. You will have no trouble with most of the pages. Over the past six months there have been quite a few coming to our site with their new phones. We hope you enjoy this improvement to our site as we are the only & first Santa Fe Trail site that can be viewed on a Smart Phone. Then I thought, here we are again, the Wet/Dry Routes Chapter waiting for the rest of the Santa Fe Trail to catch up!
May 6, 2006, the Commanding Officer of the Fort Larned Old Guard, bestowed on us the rank of Lieutenant for our service to the Fort Larned Old Guard. We wish to thank the Old Guard for this honor! In the year of 2009 we became what the Fort Larned Old Guard calls a "Career Officer" with our Life Membership in the Old Guard. This is a great way to help preserve one of our National Treasures we have right here in our backyard & the State of Kansas.
January 10, 2008 a major change took place on the Santa Fe Trail Research Site. We got our own domain name, Santa Fe Trail Research Dot Com. We also changed the name of our site to Santa Fe Trail Research. The main reason for this is because of the number of schools that come to our site just for research & teaching of the history of the Santa Fe Trail. The school year of 2008-2009 our site had more then 3,500+ different schools used our site for the study of history. So "Thanks" to all the teachers who direct the young folks to our site. We do hope you find what you are looking for, if not please ask & we will be more than happy to help you find an answer to your question.
Our new "dot com" site came with a new counter, it gives us a lot more information then we've had in the past. Coming in at number 4 is still ".edu" which shows us that a school came to our site. In March of 2012 the stats for our site reads like this: hits per hour average of 177 to a high 3,059, hits per day average, 4,266 to a high of 7,142, the total that month was, 132,260. The total hits for the year of 2012 was 1,254,759. That's an increase over 2011 of 107,471. Our total hits for 2013 were 1,607,225, giving an increase of 352,466. In the year of 2011 we had 3,158 school computers hit our site, Total hits for that same year 1,964,742.
Well, thats just about all we can tell you about our Santa Fe Trail Adventure. We get a lot of feedback about spelling. There may be spelling mistakes, but a lot of the information is written just as it appears in the resource we are using so it is historically correct. We enjoy hearing from everyone!! The website is yours, we are just the "Keepers & Webmasters" of it. There are to many people to thank for allowing us to put their material on our site. To all of them from all "Trail Buffs" a great big "Thank You!" If there is something you like, let us know, & that goes for something you don't like also.
October 1, 2010 was a sad day, the day we lost our son to liver cancer. A portion of our hearts died with him. . . . .our only son! But he's in a good place, pain free & sitting with God. At the same time he was fighting liver cancer, Larry was having some rectal bleeding & had a colonoscopy. . . .we heard the words no one ever wants to hear. . . ."you've got cancer!" Larry was diagnosed with Stage 3 colo-rectal cancer & went through 28 days of chemo & radiation. One month to the day after Tim passed away Larry had surgery at Via Christi St. Francis in Wichita. Dr. Porter & his team removed the cancer. Larry was in 8 days & after being home about a week went back with an infection & in the hospital 4 more days. Larry was in again the end of December to remove the ostomy bag & was in another 4 days. Our girls were all there during the surgery plus Kayla & at least one stayed in Wichita with their mom all the time Larry was in the hospital! We never told Tim dad had cancer as he was dealing with enough already. Larry is now fighting neuropathy as a result of the chemo & that has taken his mobility & balance away. The good news is that he is going on "13 Years Cancer Free".
February 5 & 6, 2022 Larry was having trouble with his balance & kept falling. We called an ambulance & went to the Pratt Hospital where it was determined Larry had COVID. They admitted him & he spent 4 days in Pratt where they found out his Dilantin was very high! Larry was then transfered to the Stafford Hospital where he spent 14 more days. Larry did physical therapy for three weeks at home & then released. It's going to take quite a while for Larry to get back to where he was before all this. Still use crutches to help with my balance, I don't want to fall anymore.
January 2013, our "Santa Fe Trail Research Site" had over 4448+ files of information & hundreds of pictures. There were USGS photos for over 850+ Santa Fe Trail sites along it's length. There were several hundred articles that are trail related.
We have been involved with many projects along the trail, but the most rewarding thing schools & the people we meet & the people we don't meet through our site. We can tell someone is there but who? Last year on our counter there were over 3,500 different schools from all over the world come to our site. We have been getting over a million hits a year & growing. We always hoped we are doing something right that will go down in the history of the Santa Fe Trail as an educational site for everyone, young & old.
But like everything in this world today you get Old & Gray, something comes along that will do it all bigger & better, with all the new bells & whistles. Ours just doesn't work right with the new electronic, so I've been told. So it was decided that it's time to put it to bed after 31 years on the WWW we think It is time.
We would like to thank so many people who have had anything to do with the success of our site. As always there are to many, & we don't want to miss any, you know who you are.
