What is the history of Lenexa, Kansas?
Twelve years before the town of Lenexa was platted in 1869, a young man named James Butler Hickok staked a claim on 160 acres at what is now the corner of 83rd and Clare Road. At about the same time, a census of the Shawnee Indians living in the area was being taken. One of the residents was listed as “Na-Nex-Se Blackhoof,” the widow of Chief Blackhoof, who was the second signer of the 1854 treaty that ceded 1.6 million acres (6,500 km sq) of the Kansas Shawnee Indian reservation to the U.S.Government. A few miles east in Westport, Kansas CityWestport, Missouri, was the start of the Old Santa Fe Trail. It meandered through the southeast part of Lenexa on its way to Santa Fe, New Mexico. Life in eastern Kansas was about to change dramatically. Later, Mr. Hickok became a Reconnaissancescout for the Free-State Army, a sharpshooter and eventually, Wild Bill Hickok, legendary lawman of the Old West. In 1865, shortly before Na-Nex-Se died, the Kansas and Neosho Valley Railroad was organized
