Be sure to visit www.santafetrail.org/geocaching to learn about the PASSPORT ACTIVITY to accompany this Geo Tour. Fort Larned National Historic Site is on Kansas Highway 156, 6 miles west of Larned. Active from 1859 to 1878, Fort Larned was one of the major military installations on the Santa Fe Trail (only Fort Union in New Mexico was larger). Nine of the ten original stone buildings remain today, and the tenth was reconstructed in 1988. This is one of the best preserved frontier military posts in the American West, as well as on the entire Santa Fe Trail. Restoration and refurnishing of the fort are nearly completed. One building has been adapted to serve as museum, interpretive center, and administrative office. A set of Santa Fe Trail wagon ruts is located in a detached area 5 miles south of the fort. At the south end of the rut site, visitors can enter and walk the property, as well as visit the viewing stand for a look at the Trail ruts and the prairie dogs.
All containers on the Santa Fe National Historic Trail Geo Tour are military ammunition canisters with an identifying Santa Fe Trail Association yellow sticker on the top of the box, under the handle and the dark green geocaching.com ID is on the side of the boxes with the information that provides coordinates, who set the cache and who to contact for information. Each cache contains a logbook to sign, a variety of items that provide information about the Santa Fe Trail as well as swag items. If you are participating in the Passport activity, the code word is located on the inside of the box, on the top of the lid and is clearly identified as Code Word. Permission to set caches has been obtained. We ask that all cachers please respect all property at the sites where our caches are set.