Samuel Hunt Grave
Address:
4.8 miles West of Burlingame on K-31 Hwy
Burlingame,
KS
66413
Website:
About this Exploration:
Death was a distinct possibility on the
Santa Fe Trail – disease, accidents and warfare counted amount the risks encountered along the Trail. However, very few gravesites have been identified with direct historic connections to Trail activities. The Samuel Hunt grave is unusual in two respects.
First, it is the earliest military grave site on the Trail. Second, it represents a rare find on the Trail – a historic gravesite whose location is concretely established and clearly linked to Trail history. For these reasons, the site was placed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1995.
The Samuel Hunt grave is the only site along the Santa Fe Trail associated with the 1835 military expedition of the United States Dragoons across the Plains to the
Rocky Mountains to dissuade regional Indian tribes from confronting pioneers on the trail. The command was traveling east out of Council Grove on their return to
Ft.
Leavenworth when on September 11, Private Samuel Hunt of Company A, age 23, died of what Captain Lemuel Ford called “inflammation of the bowels.”
The grave is just north of a highway pull-out on Kansas Highway 31, 1.5 miles west of the bridge over Dragoon Creek and about 0.5 mile west of the Havana Stage Station site.