Kansas City, Mo. ? Researchers with the National Park Service are spending time in some city parks here.

Their aim: finding exactly where the Santa Fe Trail went through southern Kansas City, before a hiking-biking trail is developed along part of the route.

Much of the trail’s route from Independence to Santa Fe, N.M., is well-documented. But there are several stretches in Kansas City where neither historical nor physical evidence provides clues.

“We would like to be able to settle the issue,” said John Conoboy, who interprets and develops pioneer trails for the National Park Service in Santa Fe. “People like to know, ‘You are standing on the very spot where the trail existed.’ It helps bring the trails alive.”

A trail survey was performed in the 1840s, Conoboy said, but the portion covering southern Jackson County has been lost.

“If we had that,” Conoboy said, “we wouldn’t be out here.”

One location where the trail’s exact route is unknown is at the Hickman Mills School District headquarters, while the other is farther to the southwest at Schumacher Park.

Before going on to those locations, researchers are working in Minor Park, along the known route of the trail, to look for telltale signs.

Steven DeVore, a National Park Service archaeologist from Lincoln, Neb., is trying three trail-finding techniques.

He went over a portion of the trail with a magnetometer, looking for changes in the magnetic field caused by erosion in topsoil – where iron tends to concentrate.

Another technique uses an electrical current passed underground. Hard-packed earth – as would be found along a trail route – is more resistant to electricity.

DeVore is also using ground-penetrating radar to see whether it will indicate changes in the soil wrought by decades of traffic.

Bill Johnson, a geographer from the University of Kansas, is taking another approach: core samples, to be analyzed in his lab.

If layers are missing or jumbled in samples taken along the known trail route, he said, that could help researchers find the trail elsewhere.

The results could take days, Conoboy said, adding: “We may do all of this and find absolutely nothing.”