Somewhere in Kansas is a ghost town that was once a flourishing Potawatomi trading post and crossing for the Oregon Trail, but the location has been lost to time. Today, more than 150 years after the town ceased to be, research is underway to try to find it and a possible mass grave associated with it.
Uniontown gets its start
Once located in Shawnee County, Kansas, near present day Willard and Rossville, Uniontown was established as a Potawatomi trading post in 1848. This was the same time gold was found in California, prompting settlers to move west on the Oregon Trail.
“That’s the main thoroughfare, so there are 400,000 travelers who came across the Oregon Trail at that point in time. When you think about the Oregon Trail, it’s not one or two wagons. It’s this big, wide swath all traveling down the trail together,” District 5 member Scott Holzmeister said. “They would set up camp around Uniontown, and that’s where they could cross the Kansas River.”
In its heyday, several ferry crossings were set up on the river, and travelers would pay to get their wagons across.
“On some days, there were no less than 70 wagons ferried across on each boat. Roughly 225 wagons and teams came across per day on the Oregon Trail,” Holzmeister said. “When you’re pulling 75 to 200 people across at $2 a ride, you’re making a pretty good living at that time. The ferry crossings were very profitable.”
The location served as a crossing but also as an opportunity for commerce for the Potawatomi.
“Tribal members became very adept at convincing pioneers on the Oregon and California trails that they needed fresh teams of oxen or horses to continue the trip west, and we were their last opportunity to obtain their stock,” CPN District 4 Legislator Jon Boursaw said. “We then rested and fed their old stock and had them available for sale to the next group passing through.”
Boursaw said Tribal members sold food and supplies to travelers, as well as offering services such as wagon repair. They also bought excess or heavy items, such as pianos or iron stoves, from travelers who wanted to lighten their load before crossing the Rocky Mountains. Those items were often used in Potawatomi homes or resold.
During this time, Holzmeister said Uniontown had a population of about 300 people with around 60 buildings. Not much is known about the town, but they do know there was a doctor, blacksmiths, boarding houses, several taverns and trading posts, a sawmill and a gristmill, as well as a government building where residents could collect pay allotments.
Tragedy strikes Uniontown
The influx of so many people through the area led to tragedy when Uniontown suffered a cholera outbreak.
Cholera, a bacteria that thrives in fecal contaminated water, causes diarrhea and dehydration. At that time, there was no understanding of how it was transmitted or how to treat it, and there was a fatality rate of around 30% among those who contracted it, Holzmeister said.
“Because of those camp sites, you had the wagon trains in there and all those oxen, horses and people, but you had no sewage system,” he explained. “It all ran into the stream, and now you have a cholera outbreak.”
When Uniontown had its cholera outbreak in 1849, settlers fled as hundreds of people died. During this time, a legend originated of a mass burial of 22 people, all buried around a tree.
Residents at the time, assuming cholera was spread the same way as diseases such as smallpox, burned the town to stop the spread of the disease.
The town was re-established in 1851 when traders returned. However, the revival was short lived.
“Kansas Territory opened up in 1854, and by 1858, 10 years after it was established, nobody’s left and Uniontown becomes a ghost town,” Holzmeister said.
The search for Uniontown
The exact location of Uniontown is unknown today, but Dr. Blair Schneider, associate researcher and science outreach manager with the Kansas Geological Survey, and other researchers from the Kansas Geological Survey have spent the past several years collecting data at a cemetery in Shawnee County.
The cemetery holds a Boursassa enclosure as well as a plot for the Green family, who owned the land in the years following the existence of Uniontown. Today, the land is owned by the Citizen Potawatomi Nation.
Schneider started her research by using the magnetic method to search the area and record the strength of the magnetic field. Metal items and areas that have been burned have higher magnetic signatures, she said, and the burning of Uniontown means any potential sites should be easy to detect.
She also used a ground penetrating radar (GPR), which uses radio waves to send out a signal to detect any changes in underground electrical properties.
“When you hit something, you see shapes,” she said, adding that a shape she looks for is a “frowny face.”
Schneider broke the area into a grid, and through her work, they were able to find two possible structural features that were likely either metallic or burned. One was a linear feature under the surface, which she suspects might be a modern drainage feature. The other is a rectangular shape she thinks could be a foundation.
In another area, there was a tree that they thought could have been the site of a mass burial, but research showed no evidence of any mass burials there. Also, Schneider explained that the tree existing today isn’t old enough to be the tree mentioned in the legend.
However, in another area, the GPR detected several “frowny faces” with a depth up to a maximum of three feet that she believes could be a mass grave. Despite the popular saying of graves being “six feet under,” she said the shallow depth is closer to what she would expect.
“They didn’t have resources to dig holes that deep. They were dealing with an epidemic at the time, and this is thick clay that they were digging into,” she said. “So, right away, we’re looking for shallow burials.”
In 2021, Schneider returned to the site to try out a new electrical method to draw research, using electric currents to measure resistance and look for any anomalies in the subsurface. The results showed a substance, such as bone or rock, that is less conductive than the clay surrounding it. That, combined with a surface depression in the area, adds to evidence of a likely mass burial.
In 2023, further research into the suspected mass burial showed it covered an area about 11.5 feet long by 3 feet wide, around the dimensions she would expect for a shallow burial that was hand dug during an epidemic.
Also in 2023, the Boursassa enclosure, which was crumbling, was taken down to be rebuilt and repaired. While the wall was down, Schneider used GPR to examine the area.
“I had a suspicion, at this point, that there weren’t actually any Boursaws in the enclosure,” she said. “I had a suspicion the monuments were actually moved to that area away from the Green enclosure.”
After surveying the area, she could find no evidence of any burials within the enclosure.
Next steps
Going forward, Schneider hopes to attempt to examine the Green enclosure and see if perhaps the Boursassa family members might be buried there. She would like to try to use a technique called Optically Stimulated Luminescence, where she would collect soil at night from underneath the monuments. The soil would then be sent to a special lab, where they could potentially identify when that soil was last exposed to light. If it works, this might give them clues to if the monuments were placed around the time of the deaths or much later.
In the Green enclosure, there’s also an old, hand-carved headstone that is no longer readable and some rocks Schneider thinks could be markers. Research also showed an anomaly called a polarity reversal that could indicate a burial container or buried headstone. While there are tree roots in the area that could be causing some of the anomalies, she thinks there could be something there and hopes to search for unmarked burials in the area.
Another possibility she would like to consider is testing the soil for cholera DNA.
In addition to Schneider’s survey work in that area, she said she has also received permission from a nearby land owner to do further research looking for the Uniontown site on their property.
“They have a big alfalfa field, which is amazing, because that means they haven’t tilled it,” she said, adding that they’re planning to do a survey of the field this fall and collect anything at the surface, then catalogue and analyze their findings.
For now, there’s still much that is unknown about Uniontown’s location and what life was like within the ghost town. Holzmeister and Boursaw encourage anyone who has stories or information to share with them so they can help add to the history of the place.
“If anybody knows something about it, come and talk to us. We’d love to hear your stories,” Holzmeister said.
Anyone with stories or information about Uniontown can contact Boursaw at jon.boursaw@potawatomi.org or 785-608-1982.