Council Grove, Kansas

Council Grove is a city in and the county seat of Morris County, Kansas, United States. As of the 2020 census, the population of the city was 2,140. It was named after an agreement between American settlers and the Osage Nation allowing settlers' wagon trains to pass westward through the area on the Santa Fe Trail. Pioneers gathered at a grove of trees so that wagons could band together for their trip west.

Council Grove gets its name from an 1827 treaty signing with Osage Indians under an oak tree for the right-of-way for the Santa Fe Trail.

Council Grove was a stop on the Santa Fe Trail. The first European-American settler was Seth M. Hays, who came to the area in 1847 to trade with the Kaw tribe, which had a reservation established in the area in 1846. Hays was a great-grandson of Daniel Boone.

The Main street in Council Grove is the old Santa Fe Trail. The Rawlinson-Terwilliger Home, 803 West Main Street, is the oldest stone home on the Santa Fe Trail and houses the Trail Days Cafe & Museum.

A post office was established in Council Grove on February 26, 1855.

In 1858, the town was officially incorporated by the legislature. Hays also opened a restaurant in 1857, the Hays House, which is said to be the oldest continuously operating restaurant west of the Mississippi River.

The Missouri-Kansas-Texas Railroad connected to Council Grove in 1868.

The town has 15 sites listed on the National Register of Historic Places. One is the Post Office Oak. Travelers left their mail in this designated tree to be picked up by others going in the right direction. General Custer of the United States Army slept here with his troops during the American Civil War, under a large tree known now as the Custer Elm.