Be sure to visit www.santafetrail.org/geocaching to learn about the PASSPORT ACTIVITY to accompany this Geo Tour. The Cottonwood Creek crossing is located about 1 mile west of the town of Durham, Kansas. This site was a major campsite on the Santa Fe Trail, but was widely known as a difficult crossing because of the steep banks and occasional high water. There were several instances when wagon trains were caught here by blizzards and suffered losses of both livestock and human lives. This was also the site of a stage station and the largest trading ranch west of Council Grove on the trail. George Smith started the stage station and trading ranch about 1856, and this site became the first post office in Marion County. A. A. and Ira Moore bought the property in 1859 and operated it until the railroad came to the area in 1870-71. Today nothing remains of the crossing or the ranch, but a few wagon ruts may still be seen northeast of Cottonwood Creek, and there is an outstanding segment of ruts southwest of this stream. Also in this area are an outstanding set of ruts, known as the Durham Ruts, extending southwest to northeast across unbroken prairie land on the Scully property southwest of Durham, Kansas.
Containers on the Santa Fe National Historic Trail Geo Tour are military ammunition canisters, or Brochure-Holder boxes, 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.