October 15—Bicentennial Celebration of Pike's Crossing of the Cheyenne Bottoms

2:00 - 5:00 p.m., at Camp Aldrich Conference Center.

Activities include historical displays in the Camp Aldrich Dining Hall; living history presentations by noted historian David Clapsaddle of Larned, Kansas; and limited-access walking tours of Dalziel's Grove.

Lt. Zebulon Pike's 1806 expedition camped in the vicinity of Dalziel's Grove, which is a privately owned historic grove of timber traversed by Cow Creek.

The Grove cannot be accessed without crossing private property, and the current landowners have generously granted permission for The Cheyenne Partnership to allow limited access walking tours from the Camp Aldrich Conference Center into the historic area during the Pike bicentennial celebration.

The event is located 2 miles north of Highway 156 between Claflin, Kansas and the Cheyenne Bottoms Wildlife Area (road map available by clicking here).

For more information, contact: The Cheyenne Partnership: Mary Anne Stoskopf, 620-653-7579; Rod Harms, 785-537-3773, or Gene Manweiler, 620-793-4866.

Santa Fe Trail Association to Focus on Pike at October 27-29 Rendezvous

The Santa Fe Trail Association has been at the forefront of helping coordinate Pike’s national bicentennial observance through its role the national sponsors of the Zebulon M. Pike Bicentennial Commission. As a part of the bicentennial, the Association will present a three-day seminar entitled “Zebulon Pike and the Birth of the Santa Fe Trail” at their 2006 Rendezvous.

This year’s Rendezvous theme was chosen as a way to examine how the preliminary explorations by Pike laid the foundation for what would later become the Santa Fe Trail. Speakers will cover a wide range of topics, including the expedition’s relations with the Spanish, American Indians, and the environment, as well as its geopolitical ramifications, conspiratorial innuendo, and Pike’s public image over the past 200 years. Pike himself will even make an appearance in the person of John Michael Murphy, America’s preeminent first-person interpreter of the famous explorer.