Lawrence, Kansas
Prior to Kansas Territory being established in May 1854, most of Douglas County was part of the Shawnee Indian Reservation (created in 1830). During this period, the Oregon Trail ran parallel to the Kansas River, roughly through the area where Lawrence would eventually be situated and a hill known then as "Hogback Ridge" (i.e., Mount Oread, which sits on the water divide separating the Kansas and Wakarusa River). This area was used as a landmark and an outlook by those on the trail. While this territory was technically unopened to settlement prior to 1854, there did exist a few "squatter settlements" in the area, especially just north of the Kansas River.
History of the Kansas City metropolitan area
As a result of the new potential for slavery in Kansas, pro-slavery activists infiltrated Kansas Territory from the neighboring slave state of Missouri. To abolitionists and other Free-Staters, who desired Kansas to be admitted to the Union as a free state, they were collectively known as Border Ruffians. Pro-slavery Missourians flocked to Kansas in force, electing a pro-slavery Kansas Territorial Legislature. In response, abolitionists began arriving in the area, and in 1855 they declared the Kansas Territorial Legislature "bogus" and elected their own representatives to form a new territorial government in Lawrence, Kansas (approximately west of the City of Kansas). The newly established City of Kansas soon found itself in the middle of a dispute known as Bleeding Kansas.