Sitting next to old U.S. Highway 40 west of Winona is the former rest stop known locally as “Smoky Hill” and “The Diamonds.” Here was a filling station, dining room, dance hall, and curio shop. Across the road was a five or six unit motel. A flood in the 1950s damaged both buildings. The stone and glass blocks of the dismantled motel was incorporated into the Fort Wallace Museum’s main building.

On the grounds of the Fort Wallace Memorial Museum is the Pond Creek stage station. The 1865 Butterfield’s Overland Despatch building originally was located a mile west of the museum. Pond Creek was a “home” station where meals and limited accommodations could be obtained.

The surviving 8-stall roundhouse in Hugo was built in 1909. The hand-powered “deck-girder” turntable was 80 feet long. Only a faint stone outline of the turntable remains today. The building has been stabilized and hopes are to renovate the facility.

Aroya (above) and Boyero sit near the Smoky Hill Trail, Union Pacific Railroad (earlier the Kansas Pacific Railway), and old U.S. Highway 40. Realignment of the highway in the late 1930s started the decline of these once active prairie towns.