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Show Road Workers Find Long Lost Site of Fort Sage KANSAS CITY, MO. Old Fort Osage, where the Santa Fe trail began be-gan its path to the West, has been found after having been "missing" fcr a century. Historians knew its location outside out-side Sibley, Mo., a few miles northeast north-east of here, but they believed that all traces of the stockade and few buildings had disappeared shortly after its abandonment in 1835. However, highway workmen digging dig-ging in that area have happened upon what are considered ertainly tiie stone foundations of -he fort's old log buildings. The foundations were six feet under the cultivated sod on a hill overlooking the Missouri Mis-souri valley. The discovery came only a few months after Jackson county had appropriated 310,000 to purchase 16 acres for a Fort Osage historical park. Now the county plans reconstruction recon-struction of the stockade and buildings build-ings on their exact site over the old foundations. Fort Osage was built by Maj. George Sibley, sent out from Washington Wash-ington in 1804 after the Lewis and Clark expedition recommended the bluff site as a far-western outpost. It was established as a trading post to win the confidence of the Osage Indians but it soon earned a I much more important niche in the history of western expansion. For it was because of the protection afforded af-forded by the fort that Sen. Thomas Hart Benton succeeded' in obtaining a $20,000 appropriation from congress con-gress to build a road through from Fort Osage to Santa Fe. The "road" a wagon-path became the Santa Fe trail. |