One of the best-preserved sections of Santa Fe Trail wagon ruts is along this stretch of US-50, nine miles west of Dodge City. Marked by a large sign, just west of the Howell grain elevator, these wheel tracks, or ruts, lie in a rolling field 100 yards north of the parking area and are basically a broad depression in the soil, approximately 800 yards wide and two miles long. Farther west, at Cimarron, 32 miles east of Garden City and 16 miles west of Dodge City, the main track of the Santa Fe Trail crossed the Arkansas River and headed southwest across the waterless plain of the Jornada del Muerto on what was known as the Cimarron Cut-Off. This desolate region is also where, in 1831 during the earliest days of the trail, legendary mountain man Jedediah Strong Smith was killed by a band of Comanche warriors.
