FORT DODGE — The Santa Fe Trail Wet-Dry Chapter summer chapter meeting, a joint meeting with the Dodge City/Fort Dodge/Cimarron Chapter, is scheduled at 2 p.m. July 22, Eisenhower Hall, Fort Dodge.
The public is invited. Ice cream and cookies will be served, courtesy of the two Santa Fe Trail chapters.
The program will be presented by Leo E. Oliva, program chair, “History of Fort Dodge and Dedication of Five New Markers.”
The signs are a project of the Dodge City Chapter, funded in part by the Mariah Fund and several families of the chapter.
Fort Dodge was established in 1865 to help protect the Santa Fe Trail, the third military post founded in the area. It was important during the most violent years of the so-called “Indian Wars,” protecting the Santa Fe Trail and the railroad that replaced it. The post was abandoned in 1882. In 1890 it became the Kansas Soldiers’ Home and continues in that service today.
The five new historic markers replace earlier signs erected at the following sites — Commanding Officer’s Quarters, Enlisted Mens’ Barracks, Parade Ground, Quartermaster and Commissary Storehouses, and the Post Hospital.