Over three dozen military vehicles passed through Miami County Sunday, October 13th. These were special historic vehicles. Members of the Military Vehicle Preservation Association are traveling 2,500 miles on the historic Jefferson Highway. The Jefferson Highway was created in 1915 as an early north-south automobile highway through America. The route went from Winnipeg to New Orleans through lands procured by President Thomas Jefferson in the Louisiana Purchase.
Last year, a Paola High School student, Ruby Brewer, researched the Jefferson Highway and noted there were no signs about the highway between Olathe and Fort Scott. Working with the city, they installed a Jefferson Highway sign near the Paola Middle School. Sunday morning the caravan stopped in front of the middle school and picked her and her father and brother up, giving them a ride in a 1940 Navy Staff Sedan.
The original route went through Hillsdale, Paola, Osawatomie and Beagle. Osawatomie Road, by the state hospital is one of, if not the only, remaining stretches of the Jefferson Highway.
