Wilson’s Creek & George Washington Carver

Winter Migration Road Trip, Day 3 | Missouri to Kansas | Wilson’s Creek National Battlefield | George Washington Carver National Monument | November 2023

We woke up at our campsite in Central Missouri snug in our bed, but the cabin temperature was 45. After running the heater to get us above 50, we braved the brisk morning, did our morning chores, breakfasted, and then hit the road.

We started South aiming towards Springfield, MO for our first stop of the day, Wilson’s Creek National Battlefield, just Southwest of the City. We got out of the car to stretch the legs, get our passport stamps, and walk Charlotte a bit. I did a whirlwind tour of the museum to get the basics of the history, and then we got back in the van and started the short auto tour around the battlefield.

Wilson’s Creek was an early battle in the Trans-Mississippi theater and closely linked to the contest for Missouri. In short, in 1861, despite being a slave state, the Governor of Missouri (Claiborne Jackson) and the Missouri State Guard declared their neutrality in the coming conflict. But not so secretly, they aligned themselves with the South in order to oppose the Federal troops garrisoned in St. Louis. The leader of this garrison, Captain (and soon to be Brigadier General) Nathaniel Lyon took aggressive action to thwart the Governor and prevent Federal supplies from making their way South. When peace talks failed, and the Governor and his commander (General Price) demanded the Federal Garrison leave the state, General Lyon declared war on the state of Missouri, seized the state capitol in Jefferson City, and declared the office of Governor vacant.

The former Governor and the Missouri State Guard retreated to the Southwest corner of the state where they joined up with a contingent of the CSA and members of the Arkansas State Guard. General Lyon followed them to Springfield where he decided, despite being outnumbered, to make a daring assault. On August 10, 1861, General Lyon split his army in two to surround Price in a dawn surprise attack near Wilson’s Creek. The surprise went well initially, but General Price’s army rallied and were able to hold off one prong of the attack while the artillery battled it out. At the center of the battle, at what would become known as Bloody Hill, General Lyon held his line with the support of artillery from repeated assaults up from the creek. But on one of the assaults, General Lyon was killed (the first General to die in the war), and command fell to Major Sturgis. With the commander dead, the second column faltering, and supplies diminishing, Sturgis decided to pull back to Springfield, leaving the field to the Confederacy.

General Price was unable to convince the Confederate or Arkansas forces to give chase and was forced to go it alone to reclaim Missouri. He was initially successful at the Battle of Lexington, but experienced several reverses that ultimately pushed most of the State Guard out of Missouri and culminated in the Battle of Pea Ridge in 1862.

We drove the tour road around the battlefield and did our best to piece together the battle (the Audio tour is unavailable currently). Near Bloody Hill we got out to walk around the cannons, read more of the placards, and visit the monument to General Lyon.

Since it was rather cold, we returned to the van and continued our drive heading further West. We took US-60 in order to get a few more Missouri counties and avoid the interstate, and then stopped at yet another National Park Site: George Washington Carver National Monument outside of Joplin, near the town of Diamond, MO.

The site preserves Carver’s boyhood home. George’s family were bought by Moses Carver and brought to his 240 acre farm in Diamond in 1855, and George was born into slavery sometime during the Civil War. Only a week after being born, he, his mother, and his sister were kidnapped by Arkansas raiders. Only the infant George was able to be returned to the farm. After slavery was outlawed in 1865, Moses Carver and his wife raised George and his brother as their own children and encouraged their intellectual pursuits. At the age of 13 he left home to go to Fort Scott, KS and further his education. This lead him to Iowa State University where he received his Masters in agriculture science and helped him become the lead professor of Agriculture in the new Tuskegee Institute in Alabama.

Truthfully, we knew very little about Carver save his notoriety with the peanut prior to visiting. But his work after he joined the Tuskegee Institute is quite incredible. And while he was famous for his pamphlets about peanuts, he also published many other pamphlets on the use of so many other garden variety vegetables. He met with 3 sitting presidents, presented before Congress, and was instrumental in implementing modern crop rotations to prevent soil depletion.

We ended up eating lunch in the park and then walking the loop trail around the prairie, woods, and creek that Carver grew up exploring. I’m sure we could have learned even more going through the museum, but we do what we can.

From here we continued further West into Kansas grabbing a few more counties before stopping at a free dispersed site at Montgomery County Fishing Lake.