Travelers through time on the Smoky Hill River Valley

Nolan Fisher
Natural Resource Specialist
Corps of Engineers

As a proponent of a profession with multiple incentives towards a greater quality of life for both people and wildlife, we would be ignorant in our thinking to dismiss the history before the inundation of Kanopolis Lake. The Smoky Hill River Valley has served as a lifeline for its inhabitants for many centuries before our form of documentation existed. The following is a chronological abstract from the banks of the Smoky Hill River.

Many millions of years ago Kansas was covered with a warm shallow sea. Deposits from aquatic life created limestone, Dakota sandstone, and left many sea creature fossils and sharks teeth as evidence to the nonbeliever. Water flowage and under water currents created the initial topography, which later formed the Smoky Hills as the sea receded and erosion from wind and rain dominated. As the valley depression formed, years of similar climatic conditions and vegetation evolved the Smoky Hill River.

Prehistoric Wildlife such as Wooly Mammoths and Mastodons migrated the upper reaches of the river valley along with varieties of vegetarian dinosaurs. More notable travelers of pronghorn antelope, elk, and bison moved with the changing seasons and often frequented the river valley.

Early Native American tribes of Pawnee, Cheyenne, Apache, and Kiowa followed the game trails for centuries and sought campsite asylum in deep sandstone canyons and along cyclic water sources feeding the Smoky Hill River. Native American culture of the valley was chiseled into the sandstone. Rock art, known as petroglyphs remain as pictorial evidence of tribal lifestyle, human and animal representations, astronomical signage, fertility signage, and mythical creatures.

The first introduction of European explorers to the river valley was documented in 1541 as the Spanish Conquistador's led by Coronado and the search for gold in the seven cities of Cibola. Native American rock art depicted trade with the Spanish by the introduction of decorated horse and mule into tribal lifestyle. The French followed suit with explorers of the Trans-Mississippi West from the 1700's - early 1800's and introduced fur trapping to the tribes and blocked Spanish influence.

The California gold rush and the Homestead Act increased westward expansion of Europeans through the river valley during the mid 1800's. The Smoky Hill Trail and Fort Zarah Road were European transportation routes of their time that met the retaliation from the Native American tribes. Frontier Forts were erected to house hundreds of soldiers to fend the Native American tribes from the increased settlers and supply routes. Fort Ellsworth, later Fort Harker was established on the riverbank in 1864 near present Kanopolis. Famous military men and scouts for Fort Harker included George Custer (later General Custer), William F Cody (later Buffalo Bill), and James Butler Hickok (later Wild Bill Hickok).

Mass transportation began as stage lines through the river valley such as the Butterfield Overland Dispatch. The Kansas Pacific Railroad later followed it. Settlers homesteaded civilizations along the river valley as the masses drove the tribes to near extinction and later to reservations. The massive bison heard of the prairie, which served as the main tribal and early settler diet was driven to extermination on the prairie from market and waste hunting. From 1870-1880 Ellsworth rivaled Abilene, Wichita, and Dodge City as a prosperous cow town location where cattle driven from Texas met the railheads along the Smoky Hill River in Ellsworth for shipment east.

The prairie of the Smoky Hill River Valley was introduced to the barbed wire fence between 1880-1890. The valley developed some of the largest cattle ranches in Kansas. Examples are the Larson, Sherman and Millet ranches, with up to 40,000 acres and the Sherman with 100-200 employees. In 1886 Kanopolis was founded and touted as future capital of Kansas until legislature declined. In the 1900's the valley was turned with the introduction of the plow and cropland agriculture expanded and flourished until the economic depression of the 1930's. The discovery of oil along the valley and its royalties saved many farms and ranches.

The flood of 1938 on the Smoky Hill River ravaged the homesteads of its valley. Kansas congressional leaders successfully passed legislation in Washington D.C. which authorized the Kanopolis dam construction in 1940. Construction was suspended during World War II and the first man-made lake in Kansas began inundation in 1948.

Modern exploration and settlement followed the product and history has repeated itself. The Yankee Run and Venango cabins became modern settlement. Much like the Europeans in search of pursuing a better quality of life and exploring and settling along the river valley in the 1800's, the lake suited modern American ideals of freedom and pursuit of recreational pastimes with the exploration from its ¼ million annual visitors. Migrations of prehistoric wildlife in the valley are imitated with today's migrations of waterfowl, white bass running the river, and walleye spawning the dam. Today's modern camping in our parks is a replication of the Native American tribes who's prehistoric camping was in the canyons feeding the valley. The Smoky Hill River served as the watering hole for millions of prehistoric mankind and wildlife and today it serves the source of one the largest rural water municipalities in this country.

There is no arguing the marvel of the Smoky Hill River Valley. We are fortunate for the quality of life it has created and its travelers who have left behind and created historic ventures. In light of the lessons learned, it still houses natural and cultural artifacts of historic significance. Today it leaves us with challenges and many management decisions that decipher elements of its existence. Some of them being, preserving its non-renewable cultural and natural artifacts and vegetation, averting pollution and siltation while still maintaining agricultural yields, and providing recreation to its visitors while still conserving its ecosystem.

Native American rock art of the Smoky Hill River Valley remains as evidence of its travelers of yesteryear.