The Aug. 27, 1908 issue of the Marion Record contained an article written by old-timer J.B. Shields about the Lost Springs Station on the Santa Fe Trail.

The springs were on his land, and he spearheaded the effort to place a monument at the station site. The monument was dedicated on July 4, 1908.

Shields came to the area from Pennsylvania in 1881. By then, the Santa Fe Trail as a commercial route had ceased to exist. He first heard about the trail while still living in Pennsylvania, from others who had experienced the trail.

“The first I recollect of hearing of the Santa Fe Trail was in the early 1870s when a relative by the name of Samuel Shearer came back to Franklin County, Pa., from California,” he said.

Shearer told them how he and some other Pennsylvania boys went west to California during the Gold Rush of 1849. At Kansas City, they joined a large caravan headed west along the trail across the “desert,” as it was then described.

One of the young men was boisterous and said he would shoot the first Indian he saw. After being out four or five days, they came to some Indians camping by a stream. When the boaster did not shoot, the boys teased him and said, “We knew you would not shoot.”

At that, he pulled out his guns and shot, killing an Indian instantly. The others fled over the hill. By the time the caravan got over the hill, they found the country swarming with Indians, who demanded to know who had shot the Indian. They saw they would have to tell or all be killed.

The Indians took the guilty one to a spring and commanded all of the others to camp around them in a circle. They took the man and commenced to skin him alive, beginning at the fingers, compelling the others to witness the scene.

Shearer said to that day he still could see the man and hear his screams for help.

Shields said when he came to Kansas, crossed the hill, and saw the present Lost Springs site, he was led to believe that perhaps this was the scene of the tragedy.

Shields knew two old settlers who had operated the Lost Springs Station: Thomas J. Wise of Lincolnville and A.D. Blanchett of Herington. He had long talks with both of them, and they gave different versions of how the springs got their name.

Blanchett said the springs got their name after a large herd of cattle was trailed across the prairie from the west to Council Grove. By the time the oxen got to Lost Springs, they were so thirsty they rushed into the mud and piled up on each other and died. The men had to go to Council Grove on foot.

The Indians and Spanish had their own names for the spring.

Wise said that during dry years, when large caravans came along and their oxen tramped up the springs, the ox drivers would call to one another that the springs were lost.

When he and Jack Costello applied for a post office, they named it Lost Springs. It was the first post office in Marion County.

Blanchett worked for Costello in 1861, helping him dig a well and haul logs from Clear Creek for a ranch house.

At that time, the trail was used extensively.

“Sometimes at night when the campfires were lighted, it would look almost like a city around the spring,” Blanchett said. “Sometimes there must have been 200 teams of five or six yoke of oxen.”

Shields spoke of the daring and bravery of others who traveled the trail and concluded:

“Now, with all this, is it any wonder we wanted to mark the old trail, especially while we could have these old pioneers such as Blanchett to speak to us. People . . . said the trail was at least 100 feet wide with only here and there a bunch of grass or weed, and now, after 25 years of working, we can still see it in our crops.”