It all started as a project for two boys trying to earn their eagle badges from the Boy Scouts, the boys got bored after a while but one of the fathers picked up were they left off and seventy years later it has grown into a passion project that expands over 5 counties. Morris Werner was an architect by trade and graduated from Kansas State University, but his real passion was history, including the stories of how people emigrated to the Midwest over 200 years ago. The native Tennessean was crucial in mapping the routes these people took and the hardships they faced. He has written extensively not only on this road but on many of the other trails that crisscrossed through Kansas and the early settlements that sprang up around them.
Morris Werner would move back to Tennessee to work for an architectural firm for 25 years creating a hotel in Nashville, Tennesse, and the Library and Fine Arts building at the Tennesse Technical University. Upon retirement, he refocused on his passion for history, so he made writings laid out all his findings in “PIONEER TRAILS FROM U. S. LAND SURVEYS” (see link below, as well as links to other relevant resources). These writings enabled the placement of the markers on the road beginning in Riley then moving out to the other counties. For the initial batch of markers placed in 1999 Morris Werner would write the inscriptions on those plaques.
He noticed that the trail went right through Warner Park. This would be the site of the first three markers placed on the Military Trail. These markers were in the style of natural stone with a 24 square inches bronze plaque with an inscription on it of what the road's significance had to the surrounding area. Don also cleared out most of the land by himself through many painstaking hours and with funding from the city of Manhattan, Bayer Construction and the Daughters of the American Revolution to name just a few. As time passed the later plaques would be a 24-inch square on top of a metal stand in a concrete base.
This was a lot of challenging work, so Mr. Combs asked for the help of a retired schoolteacher named Doug Tippin to not only place the markers but also help educate the communities about the road and the impact it had. The two men walked the ground to confirm the swales the wagons left all those years ago. In those early days, especially with larger stone versions of the markers, they had to be placed with heavy construction equipment but luckily Bayer Construction helped immensely with this task. After the initial placements in 1999 more markers would be placed all the way into 2018, but these later ones would be the metal stand variant that Mr. Combs and Mr. Tippin would place themselves sometimes in some extremely hot conditions.
This work continued until June of 2015 when Don Combs passed away very suddenly. By the end of that month Morris Werner would also pass away. Mr. Tippin was the only member of the team left. With the encouragement of the Combs family, he continued to work on the project. The marker at City Park in Manhattan is in tribute to Don Combs that committed so much to this project. The Combs family gave all of Mr. Combs' notes first to Mr. Tippin. These papers are now available at the Riley County Historical Society Museum. Mr. Tippin is still working on other projects significant to Riley County and Kansas, like the placement of markers on the Linear Trail in Manhattan. There is also an effort to place markers for the trail's continuation that would head up to Ft. Kearny with tracks found in Washington County.
Below are articles associated with the conservation work of Don Combs and Doug Tippin
A very special thanks to Doug Tippin that sat down three separate times to give information about the trail and Don Combs and his involvement in preserving the road.
Sources:
“The Kansas Collection Welcome Page.” KanColl. Accessed November 10, 2024. https://www.kancoll.org/.
