Kansas’ Prairie Spirit Trail State Park
Prairie Spirit Trail State Park: March 2025 Trail of the Month
Located southwest of Kansas City and leading from Ottawa to Iola, the Prairie Spirit Trail State Park was the first significant rail-trail in Kansas, and the first to connect multiple Kansas communities.
“Having access to open spaces, to publicly available green spaces, that’s rare in Kansas,” said Trent McCown, park manager for the Prairie Spirit Trail and Flint Hill Trail state parks. “A huge percentage of the land in our state is privately owned, so this is a great resource for Kansans.”
“Broadening that network makes eastern Kansas a destination for trail users. It also makes this area a more enjoyable and healthier place to live.”
—Taryn Gregg, director of trails for Thrive Allen County
The Prairie Spirit Trail encompasses an iconic Kansas landscape. Along many of its 53 miles the route leads through agricultural land planted in tidy rows of field corn, wheat and soybeans. Cattle account for most of the animal sightings along the trail, but it’s not uncommon to also see turkey, deer or coyotes or to spot bald eagles, owls and, in the late summer, the annual monarch butterfly migration.
Mature cedar, oak and walnut trees provide shade in uncultivated stretches, and in the trail’s southern reaches, native prairie borders the trail. Warm breezes stir the native grasses into rolling waves, and wildflowers pepper the landscape: purple spiderwort, golden black-eyed Susans, pink prairie roses and sunflowers, Kansas’s state flower.
A Spiritual Place
There are few locals more vocal about the health benefits of the Prairie Spirit Trail than Richmond resident Lynn Anderson, who cites her home’s proximity to the trail as the key reason for purchasing the lot on which they built it.
“As soon as I learned the path along the edge of the property was a public trail, I told my husband Jack, ‘This is it! We’re building our new home here.’”
Anderson couldn’t have known 20 years ago when she and her husband moved to Richmond the role the trail would play in her surviving colon cancer. After surgery, Anderson’s medical staff emphasized the importance of exercise to her recovery.
“Each day I would head out to the trail,” said Anderson, a self-described octogenarian. “At first, I was very fatigued so I couldn’t go very far, but I would draw a line in the gravel with my foot, marking my forward progress. The next day, my goal was to make it past that line.”
Now in good health, Anderson walks 3 miles along the Prairie Spirit Trail most days, camera in hand. She enjoys photographing nature, particularly butterflies.
“It seems appropriate to me that this path is called the Prairie Spirit Trail, because there is something spiritual about this place,” said Anderson. “I credit this trail with my recovery. It was my chapel, the place where I would say my prayers. And it’s still like a cathedral to me today.”
An Economic Catalyst
The Prairie Spirit Trail traces its origins to the 1860s. The Leavenworth, Lawrence and Fort Gibson Railroad laid tracks through eastern Kansas from Leavenworth to Galveston, Texas, then sold to the better-known Atchison, Topeka and Santa Fe Railroad two decades later. In 1990, the railway was abandoned, and in 1992, the Kansas Department of Wildlife, Parks and Tourism received authorization to convert the land into the recreational trail that would eventually be named the Prairie Spirit.
“Garnett was a hub of the push for [the Prairie Spirit Trail’s development],” said McCown, who was hired to oversee trail management in 1995 and has been at the helm ever since. “But there were a lot of partners in all three communities: Garnett, Ottawa and Iola. They all wanted the economic development they believed would come from the attractions that would spring up along the trail.”
The trail’s central 17-mile section around the town of Garnett opened first in 1996. A 16-mile northern segment followed in 1998, leading from Ottawa to Richmond. The Prairie Spirit’s southernmost section was finished in 2008, completing the 18 miles from Welda to Iola. In recent years, the terminus cities of Ottawa and Iola have added an additional mile each, bringing the trail’s total to 53 miles.
Ottawa, the largest of the Prairie Spirit Trail towns and its northern terminus, has a population of fewer than 13,000. Garnett, near the trail’s midpoint, and Iola are home to 3,000 and 5,000 residents respectively. The remaining trail towns—Richmond, Welda, Princeton, Colony and Carlyle—have between 200 and 400 residents.
Parking areas, water fountains, restrooms and picnic shelters are spaced generously and strategically every 5 to 8 miles, and the Prairie Spirit is accessed by 12 official trailheads. In the larger towns of Ottawa and Iola, restaurants, breweries and shops have popped up to serve the estimated 67,000 people who used the trail in 2024.
Jeff Carroll, owner of Ottawa Bike and Trail, opened his shop in direct response to the development of eastern Kansas’ rail-trails. Carroll located his shop alongside the Prairie Spirit Trail in 2018 in anticipation of the opening of another long-distance rail-trail that would connect to it, the Flint Hills Trail State Park, later that same year. The shop sits near the intersection of the two trails.
Ottawa Bike and Trail sells, services and rents bikes and transports riders to trailheads. The shop also hosts weekly guided group rides, organizes a local cycling club and hosts events such as moonlight rides, bikepacking clinics and a spring trail-themed food and music festival.
“Ottawa is a relatively small community. We wanted to attract people to the area, to leverage the trails and create a destination shop. And we’ve done that,” said Carroll, noting that he’s seen event participants from as far away as Hawaii. “But most of our customers come from neighboring eastern Kansas. Our local customers are becoming more active because of the trails.”
Leveraging the Trails for Wellness
In addition to economic benefits, awareness of the wellness impacts of eastern Kansas’ trails has also increased among locals as these trails have continued to expand and improve.
“Communities have really been impressed by the ways in which the Prairie Spirit Trail has improved their quality of life,” said McCown. “These days, I’d say locals point to the trail’s benefits in terms of health and wellness first, then its economic effects.”
Taryn Gregg was hired in 2024 with the very goal of encouraging local trail use. Gregg serves as the director of trails for Thrive Allen County (TAC), a health and wellness organization established in 2007. TAC’s mandate was to make Allen County (home to Iola and the 9 southernmost miles of the Prairie Spirit Trail) the healthiest rural county in Kansas.
“We are passionate about trails as a health resource,” said Gregg. “They are a way to maintain and promote not only physical health, but social and psychological as well. A pill isn’t going to fix everything. It’s important to get outside and breathe the fresh air. It’s a healing experience.”
TAC was so convinced of the role that trails could play in health and wellness that they launched a local bike share program and spearheaded the creation of another rail-trail, the Southwind Trail, which opened in 2013. The Southwind serves as a southern extension of the Prairie Spirit Trail, leading 7 miles from Iola to Humboldt.
Individuals and agencies across eastern Kansans have caught the trail bug, launching multiuse paths that intersect with the Prairie Spirit. Near Iola, a new trail system connects the Prairie Spirit to Kansas’ newest state park, Lehigh Portland. In Ottawa, the Flint Hills Trail, completed in 2018, travels east to west and ranks as the state’s longest at 118 miles. And construction is underway on the new Maple Leaf Trail, a 15-mile rail-trail planned from Ottawa north to Baldwin City along the same railroad right of way.
“Broadening that network makes eastern Kansas a destination for trail users,” said Gregg. “It also makes this area a more enjoyable and healthier place to live.”
Garnett resident Leslea Rockers sees the Prairie Spirit Trail as integral to her wellbeing. The 59-year-old director of the East Central Kansas Area Agency on Aging has relied on the trail for meetups with a walking buddy for more than 30 years.
“I’m out on the trail at least once or twice a week,” said Rockers. “I take walks with my friend. I run with my local running club. I’ve trained for a marathon. I’m outdoors nearly every morning at 5:30 a.m., exercising. And the Prairie Spirit Trail has been a significant part of that.”
Rockers drinks in the scenery, watching the progress of the local corn and soybean crops, spying turkey and deer, enjoying the shade of cedar, oak and walnut trees. Whatever economic value the trail may have provided her community—and she’s certain there has been some—it is these benefits to her quality of life that she’s most grateful for.
“We are so lucky to have the Prairie Spirit Trail in our community,” she said.
Related Links
Prairie Spirit Trail State Park
Trail Facts
Name: Prairie Spirit Trail State Park
Used railroad corridor: The rail corridor was originally used by the Leavenworth, Lawrence and Fort Gibson Railroad, subsequently operated by the Atchison, Topeka and Santa Fe Railway.
Trail website: Prairie Spirit Trail State Park
Length: 53 miles
Counties: Allen, Anderson, Franklin
Start point/end point: The Prairie Spirit’s northern trailhead is at Ottawa’s Old Depot Museum (135 W. Tecumseh St.). Its southern trailhead is located on W. Bruner Street in Iola, between W. Davis Street and S. State Street.
Surface type: Crushed limestone with brief asphalt sections in Ottawa, Garnett and Iola
Grade: Overall, the trail has a grade of less than 2% with a short 4% climb near Pottawatomie Creek in Garnett.
Uses: Walking and bicycling; wheelchair accessible
Difficulty: Easy
Getting there: Kansas City International Airport (1 Kansas City Blvd., Kansas City, MO) is approximately 75 miles northeast of Ottawa. Amtrak serves travelers in Kansas City, MO (30 W. Pershing Rd.), Lawrence, KS (413 E. 7th St.), and Topeka (500 SE Holliday Place).
Access and parking: Parking is available at the following trailheads, listed from north to south. There is also ample roadside parking at numerous crossroads along the route.
- Northern Prairie Spirit Trailhead, Old Depot Museum, 135 W. Tecumseh St., Ottawa
- Kanza Park, W 13th St., Ottawa
- S Princeton Circle Dr., Ottawa
- Santa Fe Depot, 821 S. Main St., Garnett
- Cofachique Park, N State St., Iola
- Southern Trailhead, western terminus of Neosho St., Iola
To navigate the area with an interactive GIS map, to see more photos, read reviews and ratings, and learn about trail services, visit TrailLink.com, RTC’s free trail website.
Rentals: Rent a bike and get trail transportation at Ottawa Bike and Trail (30 S. Main St.), only 0.5 miles from the Ottawa trailhead. In Iola, pick up some free wheels from the Allen County Bike Share; the closest location is at 9 S. Jefferson Ave., 0.5 miles from the Iola trailhead.
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