Camp Meetings

Camp meetings once swept across this nation's western frontier, giving people of the plains a touch of home, which many had left on the East Coast. A prominent social force throughout Kansas in the 1800s and early 1900s, camp meetings in this area were started at the Shawnee Mission by The Rev. Thomas Johnson, for whom this county was named.

A combination of religious inspiration, social support, and frontier entertainment, camp meetings advanced freedom of expression, and were embraced by people of faith in Lenexa .