Black Jack Ruts: Santa Fe Trail Wagon Swales on a Kansas Tallgrass Prairie

Black Jack Ruts, on the Santa Fe National Historic Trail in eastern Kansas, preserves swales: wide ditches worn into the prairie by thousands of heavy trade wagons. Exhibits along a trail explain how the wagons moved, what grows around the ruts and why the prairie is burned each year. This page draws on the audio descriptions of three of those exhibits.

The site and its trail

The site is called Black Jack Ruts and the Ivan Boyd Prairie Preserve. From the parking area, a wide gravel path leads to the wagon ruts, curving right across a tree-lined creek with glimpses of the prairie beyond. That path is the accessible part of the trail and ends at the first swale and its exhibits. Beyond it the trail divides into a loop that crosses the largest and deepest swales, reaches a high ridge with a prairie view and a farthest point with a marker and a dramatic view of the swales, and returns through the prairie.

The name comes from the blackjack oaks growing along the creek, which also gave their name to the Santa Fe Trail town and the battle of Black Jack. The preserve is named for Ivan Boyd, a naturalist and conservationist who lived in Baldwin, Kansas, and taught at Baker University.

The trail and its wagons

The Santa Fe Trail was a 900-mile overland trade route connecting Franklin, Missouri, with Santa Fe, New Mexico, and it took wagon trains six to eight weeks to make the journey. Thousands of heavy trade wagons left their marks on the land. Here the parallel swales are as wide as 15 feet, and their impressions can be seen easily in aerial photography. Four very deep swales, at a depth of four-and-one-half feet, are some of the most dramatic on the trail.

Wagons often traveled side by side in open areas to avoid dust and obstacles or to find a smoother path. Because most traders walked alongside their wagons, as many trade goods as possible could be carried in them. Early in the journey, the exhibit notes, caravans could still get help or supplies, but soon they would be on their own. In this area, teamsters had to cross Grindstone Creek without breaking a wheel or axle and then climb the ridge called "The Narrows," a nine-mile stretch of land between water hazards. A quotation on the orientation panel from Joseph C. Brown, a surveyor, notes good camping places, water, wood and pasture, and some excellent timbered land along the creek.

The trail's use changed over time. It was primarily a trade route, but by 1854 settlers used it to reach the newly organized Kansas Territory. Settlement led to a long-term cycle of displacing indigenous populations, disrupting prairie wildlife and vegetation, and permanently imprinting the land.

The tallgrass prairie

The swales cross a native tallgrass prairie, rare, unplowed and beautiful, where trail travelers walked among 230 species of native plants. The grasses can grow as high as seven feet, and their height varies from year to year with precipitation. Even with five- to seven-foot grasses, five swales are visible year-round, and five more appear after the prescribed burn each April, so ten swales can be seen traversing these 18 acres of prairie.

The exhibits show how people used the prairie's plants, citing guides to the region's wild plants by Kelly Kindscher. According to the exhibit, Kansas gayfeather bulbs could be eaten cooked or raw, and a brew of the roots was used to treat kidney and bladder diseases. Common rosinweed made a tea used as a diuretic, emetic and tonic stimulant, and its resin was chewed as gum. Little bluestem ashes made a compress for sores and, mixed with water, helped to relieve indigestion. Rattlesnake master tea, made from roots and leaves, was used to treat fever and snakebite, and its leaf fibers were used for weaving. Big bluestem, the predominant grass, grows five to nine feet tall, and Indiangrass four to eight feet. The exhibit adds a caution: do not eat wild plants without training to identify them, because it is easy to mistake a deadly plant for an edible one. Prairie hyacinth, for example, can be confused with death camas when it is not in bloom.

Plains Indian cultures relied on bison for food and shelter, using every bit of the animal, including the meat, hides, brains, intestines and bones. The meat and feathers of the greater prairie chicken played a constant role in food, dress and ceremonies, and prairie plants served for food, medicine, dyed fibers for weaving and other cultural practices. Food, water and shelter all came from the land, while to early traders and pioneers the land was a connecting route for trade and settlement.

Keeping the prairie

Before controlled burns, prairies naturally ignited every couple of years. This prairie is burned annually, which eliminates woody vegetation and dead litter and returns nutrients to the soil. Improper management can destroy a prairie's diversity, and intact prairies like this one are rare today.

Sources

• National Park Service, Santa Fe National Historic Trail, Black Jack Ruts Exhibits and Audio Description, which credits Kelly Kindscher's ethnobotanical guides for the plant uses; rewritten in hubnx's own words.