Bill Busby, associate scientist with the Kansas Biological Survey, joins the Feb. 17 exploration of the Black Jack Battlefield site.

Several people explore the Black Jack Battlefield near Baldwin City on Feb. 17 for future development of a trail. Douglas County leaders want to take advantage of a federal heritage designation in several counties in Kansas and Missouri that would allow access to funding for Civil War-era historical sites and help increase tourism in those areas.

Area biologists Kelly Kindscher, Stan Roth and Roger Boyd are helping develop the prairie and a walking trail around the battlefield site.

The Black Jack Battlefield trust recently received a 0,000 grant from the Kansas Department of Commerce to help prepare a plan on how to develop the site for tourists.

Some believe the Black Jack Battlefield east of Baldwin City was the site in 1856 of the first skirmish that led to the Civil War.

Now, five years after the land was put up for sale and almost one year after hundreds celebrated the battle’s 150th anniversary, the battlefield’s trust continues to develop it as a tourist attraction honoring Bleeding Kansas.

“We’re getting a little bit better at being able to accommodate people now that we’ve got the place cleared out a little bit and the brush under control,” said Karl Gridley, a member of the Black Jack Battlefield Trust.

The 40-acre site, known as the Black Jack Battlefield and Nature Park, is just south of U.S. Highway 56, and members of the trust continue to work on developing the battle site into a historical place with a nature trail.

Area biologists Kelly Kindscher, Stan Roth and Roger Boyd are helping develop the prairie and a walking trail around the site that includes wooded area.

The famous abolitionist John Brown led a group of men there against a pro-slavery force on the morning of June 2, 1856. No one died during the skirmish, but several men suffered injuries.

The battlefield trust also recently received three recent grants to help develop the site, said trust member Carol von Tersch, of Lawrence.

An award from the Kansas Commerce Department will allow a consulting firm from Charlottesville, Va., to come visit the site and help produce an interpretative plan on how to display the battlefield. The consultants will play host to several meetings with the public to hear input about the site.

A grant from the Kansas Humanities Council build a kiosk at the park to help provide visitors with history of the battle along the nature trail, which the trust hopes to open for the public in six months, Gridley said.

Another grant from the Douglas County Community Foundation will allow the trust to buy prairie grass and wildflower seed. The trust will match that grant with volunteer labor for the planting and building of a foot bridge, von Tersch said, although much of the labor will come from Westar Energy’s Green Team.

The trust has raised matching funds from private donors and local governments to earn all grants.

In late 2006, sites that have ties to Civil War history in eastern Kansas and western Missouri received designation as a national heritage area.

“In the long run, we’re going to be a very integral part of that,” Gridley said.

He would like to see the Black Jack Battlefield become a premier site among all of the area’s Bleeding Kansas sites.

Many are smaller sites that have been isolated from each other, but the designation will help provide a more complete history of Bleeding Kansas for tourists, Gridley said.

With several development plans still being considered and the trust also applying to place the battlefield itself on the National Register of Historic Places, members of the trust consider the events of the last year exciting.

Gridley also said the site will be open again June 2 to celebrate the anniversary of the battle, although it will not be as big of an event as the sesquicentennial.

For now, the trust is hoping to get more grants and to make the site more accessible to the public.

“We’re a nonprofit, and we would just like to see it open, but of course it won’t have a lot of bells and whistles,” Gridley said. “I don’t think the people want that.”