I taught history for most of my life, and I retired from the classroom in 2018. Since then I have spent a good deal of time on the road visiting the places I used to lecture about. Kansas surprised me. Most people drive across it on I-70 in a hurry to get somewhere else, and they miss a state that holds one of the most important civil rights stories in America, two well-preserved frontier forts, and a town founded by formerly enslaved people who came west looking for a fresh start.
This list runs from number ten up to number one. It mixes National Park Service sites with state landmarks and a couple of privately run places that are worth your time. I have tried to be accurate about who manages each one and what you will actually find when you arrive, because a few of these spots are easy to get wrong.
Here is my ranked list of ten historic sites in Kansas. Let’s get started.
| Site | Designation | Managed By | Where |
|---|---|---|---|
| Brown v. Board of Education | National Historical Park | National Park Service | Topeka |
| Fort Scott | National Historic Site | National Park Service | Fort Scott |
| Fort Larned | National Historic Site | National Park Service | near Larned |
| Lewis & Clark | National Historic Trail | National Park Service | Kansas River corridor |
| Nicodemus | National Historic Site | National Park Service | Graham County |
| Seelye Mansion | Historic home museum | Private | Abilene |
| Coronado Heights | WPA-built park | Saline County | near Lindsborg |
| Monument Rocks | National Natural Landmark | Private (open to visitors) | Gove County |
| Augusta Historic Theater | Historic theater | Private nonprofit | Augusta |
| Geodetic Center (Meades Ranch) | Survey datum point | Private (marker in town) | Osborne County |
10. Geodetic Center of North America (Meades Ranch)
We start with a spot that matters more to surveyors than to most travelers, and I think that is exactly why it belongs on the list. The Meades Ranch Triangulation Station in Osborne County is one of the quiet places where a whole continent was measured. A survey marker was set here in 1891, and in 1901 it was chosen as the standard reference point for mapping the United States.
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For decades, every official map of the country was tied back to this single point on the Kansas plains. When Canada and Mexico agreed to base their networks on it, the system became the North American Datum. People sometimes call this the geographic center of the continent, which is not quite right. It is the geodetic datum point, the place all the other measurements were referenced from.
The actual station sits on private ranch land about 18 miles southwest of the town of Osborne, and it is not open to the public. You can still mark the occasion, though. A replica marker and a Kansas historical sign stand at a roadside rest area along U.S. Highway 281 at the north edge of Osborne. It takes five minutes to visit and makes a good story.
9. Augusta Historic Theater
From a survey marker we move to a movie house. The Augusta Historic Theater sits in downtown Augusta, a short drive east of Wichita, and it has been showing films since it opened in 1935. That makes it one of the last American movie theaters built during the 1930s that still runs today.
The interior is the draw. It was designed in an Egyptian-themed Art Deco style, and the restoration work has kept that look intact. Sitting in a room like this reminds you that going to the movies used to be an occasion in itself, not just a way to see a film.
The theater is run as a community nonprofit and still hosts movies, live performances, and concerts. Check the schedule before you go, since hours depend on what is playing. If you are passing through the Wichita area, it is an easy and inexpensive stop.
8. Monument Rocks (National Natural Landmark)
People think of Kansas as flat, and then they come around a bend in Gove County and find chalk pillars rising 70 feet out of the grassland. Monument Rocks, also called the Chalk Pyramids, is one of the strangest and most beautiful sights in the state. I want to be precise about it, because the name gets muddled. This is a National Natural Landmark, not a historic landmark. It was the first site in the entire program to earn that designation, back in 1968.
The chalk formed roughly 80 million years ago, during the Cretaceous Period, when a shallow sea covered this part of the continent. The same beds have produced fish, mosasaur, and other marine fossils over the years. Standing among the pillars, you are looking at the bottom of an ancient ocean lifted into the open air.
One thing to understand before you drive out here. Monument Rocks sits on private ranch land, and the owners have generously kept it open to the public at no charge. Treat it as the privilege it is. Do not climb the fragile rocks, stay on the roads, pack out what you bring in, and there are no facilities on site, so plan ahead.
7. Coronado Heights
Just north of the Swedish-heritage town of Lindsborg, a sandstone hill rises about 300 feet above the Smoky Valley floor. The view from the top runs for miles, and crowning it is a small stone castle that looks older than it is. Coronado Heights takes its name from the Spanish explorer Francisco Vázquez de Coronado, whose 1541 expedition is thought to have reached this area in search of the fabled cities of gold.
The castle itself dates to the 1930s. It was built as a Works Progress Administration project during the Depression, one of thousands of public works that put people to work while leaving something useful behind. The stone shelter, picnic spots, and lookout were added and improved over the years, and the site passed into county care for the community to use.
Today it is a county park that is free to visit and popular for hiking and picnics. Bring a sandwich, climb to the shelter, and watch the sun move across the valley. It is one of the better sunset spots in central Kansas.
6. Seelye Mansion
Abilene is best known for the Eisenhower Presidential Library, but a few blocks away stands a different kind of landmark. The Seelye Mansion is a 25-room Georgian home built in 1905 by Dr. Alfred Seelye, who made a fortune selling patent medicines across the Midwest. The house has stayed remarkably intact, right down to much of the original furnishings.
What makes the place memorable is the detail. There is ornate woodwork, period lighting, and a ballroom on the third floor. The home stayed in the family for generations, which is part of why so much of the original character survives. It is the kind of house that tells you a great deal about how a successful family lived at the turn of the last century.
The mansion is privately operated and open by guided tour. Tours run on a set schedule, so it is worth calling ahead before you make the drive. The guides know the family history well and the stories are half the fun.
5. Nicodemus National Historic Site
Now we reach the National Park Service sites, and the first one is a place I think every American should know about. Nicodemus, in Graham County, was founded in 1877 by African Americans who left the South after the Civil War. They were part of the Exoduster movement, a wave of Black families who came to Kansas looking for land, education, and a measure of freedom they could not find in the former Confederacy.
Nicodemus is the only one of these all-Black western towns founded by formerly enslaved people that still survives today. The early settlers faced hard winters, drought, and the disappointment of being passed over by the railroad, and yet the community held on. Congress recognized its importance in 1996, when Nicodemus became a unit of the National Park Service.
The site preserves five historic buildings, including the First Baptist Church, the African Methodist Episcopal Church, the township hall, the old school, and the St. Francis Hotel. The visitor center tells the story through exhibits and ranger programs, and descendants of the original settlers still gather here. Come with time and an open mind. This is a place for listening.
“Without a struggle, there can be no progress.”
Frederick Douglass
4. Lewis & Clark National Historic Trail
The Lewis and Clark National Historic Trail traces the route of the Corps of Discovery from 1804 to 1806, and Kansas has a genuine claim to it. The expedition came up the Missouri River along what is now the Kansas and Missouri border. On June 26, 1804, the party reached the mouth of the Kansas River, the spot now known as Kaw Point in present-day Kansas City, and camped there for three days.
From there they continued north past present-day Leavenworth and Atchison. On July 4, 1804, a few miles north of Atchison, the men marked the nation’s first Independence Day celebration west of the Mississippi and named two nearby streams Independence Creek and Fourth of July Creek. These are small moments, but they happened on Kansas ground.
The trail is administered by the National Park Service, and it is not a single hiking path. Instead it links river access points, interpretive stops, and parks across sixteen states. In Kansas, Kaw Point Park is the place to start. There is a riverside overlook and interpretive panels where the two rivers meet, and it is free to visit.
3. Fort Larned National Historic Site
If you want to understand the frontier army, Fort Larned is one of the best-preserved places to do it. The post began in 1859 as a camp on the Pawnee Fork, set up to guard traffic on the Santa Fe Trail. It took the name Fort Larned the following year and grew into a sandstone garrison about five and a half miles west of the town of Larned.
For nearly two decades the fort protected mail coaches and freight wagons and served as an agency for the Bureau of Indian Affairs. That dual role is worth sitting with. The same post that escorted traders was also part of the federal system that displaced and controlled the Plains tribes. The army left in 1878, and the buildings became part of the National Park System in 1964.
What sets Fort Larned apart is how complete it is. Nine original sandstone buildings still stand around the parade ground, including barracks, officers’ quarters, and a guardhouse, furnished to look as they did in the 1860s. There is a museum, a self-guided tour, and a nature trail along the Pawnee Fork. Plan on a couple of hours.
RELATED: 10 Best Civil War Sites In America
2. Fort Scott National Historic Site
In the runner-up spot is another frontier fort, and this one carries even more weight in American history. Fort Scott was established in 1842 in eastern Kansas, named for General Winfield Scott, as a link in the chain of forts guarding the road between Fort Leavenworth and Fort Gibson. The original garrison left in the 1850s, but the place was far from finished.
Fort Scott sat right at the center of the violence known as Bleeding Kansas, the running battle over whether the state would enter the Union slave or free. During the Civil War it became a major Union supply base and recruiting station, including for some of the first African American regiments. Few places let you stand inside both the slavery crisis and the war that followed.
The site became a National Historic Site in 1978 and now protects around twenty historic structures, a parade ground, and a patch of restored tallgrass prairie inside the city of Fort Scott. You can take a self-guided walk through the officers’ quarters, barracks, and guardhouse, and the museum does an honest job with the hard parts of the story.
1. Brown v. Board of Education National Historical Park
My choice for the most important historic site in Kansas is the place where the country began to dismantle legal segregation. I taught the Brown decision for years, so standing inside the building where the story centers meant a great deal to me. One quick correction first, because the old signs and a lot of articles still get it wrong. In 2022 Congress redesignated this site from a National Historic Site to Brown v. Board of Education National Historical Park. The new name is the correct one.
The case began in Topeka in the early 1950s. Oliver Brown and a group of other Black parents challenged a school system that sent their children past nearby white schools to attend segregated ones farther away. Their lawsuit, argued before the Supreme Court by Thurgood Marshall, was joined with cases from several other states. On May 17, 1954, a unanimous Court ruled that separate educational facilities are inherently unequal, overturning the 1896 Plessy v. Ferguson decision.
The park is centered on the former Monroe Elementary School, one of the four segregated schools for Black children in Topeka. The National Park Service restored the building and opened it to the public in 2004. Inside you will find exhibits, films, and ranger-led programs that walk you through the legal fight and the people behind it. The school is generally open daily, though it closes on Thanksgiving, Christmas, and New Year’s Day, so check current hours before you go.
“Where you see wrong or inequality or injustice, speak out, because this is your country. This is your democracy. Make it. Protect it. Pass it on.”
Thurgood Marshall
If you want to read more after your visit, I recommend Simple Justice by Richard Kluger. It is the definitive history of the case, and it has held up for decades. I am the kind of person who buys the book the professor mentions in passing, and this is one I am glad I tracked down.
More Things To Do In Kansas
If this list has you planning a trip, we have more guides to help you make the most of it. For the full rundown of National Park Service sites in the state, see our guide to the national parks in Kansas. To put the Brown v. Board story in national context, read our roundup of the best civil rights sites in America. And to dig deeper into the story that Nicodemus belongs to, visit our guide to the best Black history sites in America.
We do not make this up out of thin air. More Than Just Parks is a family operation. My sons Will and Jim have spent their adult lives exploring and filming America’s national parks and the country’s public lands, working alongside the National Park Service, the Department of the Interior, the U.S. Forest Service, and others. And in 2018, after a lifetime in the classroom, I joined the team to help tell the stories behind these places.
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