Kanopolis ? All that lies between visitors and 19th century pioneer life at Legacy Trail is a car window.

The 27-stop auto tour gives participants an idea of what the area looked like before Kanopolis Lake was built.

“You can witness everything from your air-conditioned car,” said Nolan Fisher, U.S. Army Corps of Engineers park manager at the lake. “It invites you to the back roads of Ellsworth County, Kansas, that most people don’t know anything about.”

Historian Jim Gray mapped out the 80-mile Legacy Trail that circles the lake in the 1980s while working there as a ranger. He said his work led him to ghost towns, cemeteries and caves, and he thought such an area shouldn’t go unnoticed.

The Army Corps of Engineers turned Gray’s discovery and research into Legacy Trail.

The attraction is a moving history lesson that takes visitors through family cemeteries, caves and forts, among other sites.

“It gets people off the highway,” Fisher said.

One stop, the Gile Family Cemetery, holds the remains of Civil War captain William and Adaline Gile, who were early pioneers of the Smoky Hill River Valley. Another, the Scates Cemetery, holds many graves of victims of 1867 and 1872 outbreaks of cholera.

“You can just feel the trials and tribulations of pioneer life,” Gray said.

Other stops include the Faris Caves, Mushroom Rock State Park and Fort Harker. The latter was once associated with Gen. George Custer, “Buffalo” Bill Cody and Wild Bill Hickok.

“This whole general area is steeped in a lot of history,” Gray said. “It has to do with the opening up of Kansas, the railroad that came through here and a lot of early pioneer development after the Civil War. You have a lot of pretty neat history.”