Village of New Santa Fe
This is the small village we lived south of up on Waid's or Wayne's Hill. The village proper was between State Line Road and Wornall Road, across from the present Avila University. The main street of the village was the Santa Fe Trail which runs behind Avila over to Holmes Road. The Santa Fe Trail ruts may be seen in a portion of the Red Bridge Park. There was once a Christian church that I attended VBS at as a child and mom purchased a large metal slide from a rummage sale there once. The church was torn down when I was in high school. All that's left is a cemetery and a historical marker.
- D. Rush, 2011.
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Village of New Santa Fe
Taken from the book called Jackson County Pioneers. By Pearl Wilcox, 1975.
It was in the village of New Santa Fe that two trails to the West met the one from Westport and one from Independence which came through Blue Valley. Today the official Santa Fe Trail marker stands at State Line and the one street of the town at 125th Street. This village of the trail days, as well as Westport, owed its very beginning and the period of its greatest commercial importance to the Santa Fe trade and all commerce to the Southwest.
New Santa Fe was created when Dabney Lipscomb and his wife, Elizabeth, on May 6, 1851, deeded a small part of their land for a townsite. The plat contained eighteen lots. The street on the west side was State Line; on the north side, Prairie Street; on the east, Shawnee Street. The road through the center running
east and west, Main Street, continued to Independence.
The village of New Santa Fe consisted of two general stores, a shoe shop, a drugstore, the Watson Place Inn, a blacksmith shop and the post office, established August 2, 1853, with Benjamin C. Westfall as first postmaster. A saloon was on the state line, making it possible to transact business in Missouri or Kansas, and in the building was Dr. Harrison's office. One of the store buildings was built by James Bridger and George W. Kemper. The storekeeper was J.P.Smith.
The first Masonic Lodge in Jackson County was organized in New Santa Fe and met in J.P.Smith's store. This store was burned in 1856 during the border warfare, destroying the Masonic records. As the lodge had only twelve to fifteen members and border conditions were so turbulent it was disbanded.
In the 1860 census, the following tradespeople are listed: blacksmiths, Stephen Abston, Henry Westhoff, Isaac Bryant, Frank Davis; carpenters, Jacob T. Palmer, Benjamin Thurman; saddler, John B. Short; wagonmaker, Francis Theobold; freighter, Henry T. Chiles; cooper, Henry J. Newman; stonecutter, James Ingram; merchant, M.S. Burr; physician, Thomas M. Bacon; dentist, Charles W. Jones; hotel keeper, David Jones; butcher, J.C. Overall.