In 1847 it was decided to remove the Potawattomies [modern spelling is Potawatomi] to a new reservation on the Kaw River. …
    Uniontown [someimtes spelled as two words, Union Town] became a place of importance, and the “head centre” of the Pottawatomie nation. Here the traders had their stores, and here the payments were made. Among the traders at this post were Kinzie, Polk, Lasly, Sarpie and Stinson. The government maintained shops here, and built a mill on Mill creek, for which that stream derives its name. Here, also, gathered, at payments, blacklegs [card sharps], whisky-vendors, gamblers and thieves, by the hundred. The Missouri river towns sent forth a swarm of these reptiles, and even St. Louis contributed its share. The presences of troops drove these vermin who preyed upon the Indians into the timber in the day time, but they prowled around the town and camp at night, fleecing and robbing. …
    In 1849 the prairies were invaded. A crowd of gold seekers, rushing to California, took Uniontown in their route. Many crossed at Papin’s Ferry, others near Uniontown. Day after day the trains of immigrants filed “over the hills and far away.” …
   An awful chapter in the history of those times would be a true narrative of the ravages of the cholera, which finds its victims alike in the city and the wilderness. Unable to aid their comrades the well left the sick and dying by the roadside. They were taken into the Agency and cared for. …

   And in the little graveyard which is now all that’s left of Uniontown, a row of rude graves covered with rough stones, to keep away the burrowing wolf, marks the ravages of the pestilence that walked the prairies at noonday
.     The days of Uniontown came to an end. The place had no water near, and for that and various reasons the agency was removed to St. Marys. Singularly enough after the removal the present owner of the land found water at thirty feet, within a short distance of where a well had once been dug ninety feet without success. …
    Between Post Creek, which runs through a narrow deep wooded valley to the Kaw, and another valley or ravine running back from the river, is a high bluff which overlooks the valley of the Kaw east and west for a long distance. A bare spot in a weedy pasture, with a few shapeless heaps of earth and stones, is the former site of Uniontown. A farmhouse with an orchard is near, occupied by a Mr. Green, who married Mrs. Lapointe, the widow of Michael Lapointe one of the “fathers of the hamlet.” The cemetery of which we have spoken is a small enclosure surrounded by a stone wall. The few monuments left are of recent date, and bare the names of the Bourassas and Lapointes and Vassars, names which have long been known among the Pottawatomies. The oldest graves are unmarked by cross or stone.

Existing cemetery markers, on the bluffs above the Kaw River and the hamlet of Willard, are the only tangible remains from Shawnee Co.’s “first city.” All eighteen of the extant monuments date from after statehood (as late as 1928) except for one (Joseph D. Bourassa) dating October 1860. Nearby is a lonely stone house, itself a testament of “long ago.” Several writers have spoken of ghosts roaming the enigmatic prairie around Uniontown “where time stops motionless;” there are few more haunting places in Kansas.

Catty-corner across the road from the Uniontown and Green cemeteries, the Herbert Reinhard Green Memorial Wildlife Area, consists of two nature trails: the Oregon Trace Trail is a three-quarter's mile hike and the Post Creek Ridge Trail is a one mile loop. Both paths are occassionally mowed. Site is maintained by Kansas Wildlife and Parks.

—Warning: Dress to repel ticks!

Read more about Green Wild Life Area
Read more about Oregon Trail Trace