The Steelville Trail of Tears Committee plan to welcome 19 Cherokee Cyclists June 11 at the Steelville City Park.

The cyclists are part of the Remember the Removal Bike Ride that spans nearly 950 miles, commemorating the forced removal of the Cherokee people.

The riders are from the Eastern Band of Cherokee Indians in North Carolina and Cherokee Nation in Oklahoma.

The riders will travel from Farmington to Steelville along State Highway 8 on their arrival day.

Committee Chair Jennifer Whitson shared this year’s festivities for the riders.

“We are going to have these people stopping in. This is the fourth year that we will meet them,” said Whitson.

The riders will stay the night at Wildwood Springs Lodge and the Trail of Tears Committee will meet them at the Steelville City Park during the day.

“We meet them and we celebrate that they made it,” said Whitson. “We usually give them gifts like gift bags and a T-Shirt.”

The committee is going to share an 11 minute short film with the riders.

Whitson said that film was made by Cherokee Filmmakers using a $25,000 grant from Missouri Humanities. The event will be the film’s first showing.

“People sometimes meet them at the park because we tell them ‘hey this is happening here, but we don’t encourage them to follow them down the highway,” said Whitson.

Last year, the committee received a $10,000 grant from Impact100 Crawford County to place four informational panels at the park.

The committee was created in 2023 to preserve the Native American History of Steelville.

Whitson said that her daughter Erin Whitson inspired her to help preserve Steelville’s Native American history.

“People need to know the good, the bad and the ugly,” said Whitson. “It’s not just local history, it’s national.”

Most of the Cherokee people from 1838-39 who were involved in the Trail of Tears took the Northern Route when they were forced to go to reservations.

The northern route travels through Georgia, Tennessee, Kentucky, Illinois, Missouri, Arkansas and Oklahoma. The route starts in New Echota, Ga. and ends in Tahlequah Okla., the capital of Cherokee Nation.

Steelville is almost at the farthest northern part of the northern route on the Trail of Tears.

The committee plans to place a statue in the park, but have struggled to acquire funding.

“We’re trying to get 1,000 people to donate $100 each,” said Whitson.

The 10-foot bronze statue will be of a rising Phoenix, with a family on one side and a missionary and freedom slave on the other.

“Not many people know that the Cherokee had slaves and that they brought slaves with them,” said Whitson.

Cherokee Sculptor Daniel HorseChief, a Cherokee Nation citizen and artist will be sculpting the statue for the committee.