Topeka, KAN. (WIBW)--A recent fire took a devastating toll on a historic capitol city home.

The Owen house, located in north Topeka, was once a destination for slaves searching for a better life. A place that was once an open door to slaves on the road to freedom...now is boarded up with warnings of do not enter.

A fire Saturday tore through most of the house leaving the owner and local historians worried they may have lost a significant part of Topeka civil war history.

"It made me sad to possibly lose it after so much hard work...then a little flash of fire to destroy it...so sad,” local historian Dee Puff said.

It was here that so many slaves fled to between the years of 1857 and 1865...Puff says women and children slept in the attic while the men slept in the woods out back. Her path of fascination with the Underground Railroad started as a kid when she got to know a woman slave while living in the Flint Hills.

"Evidently she must have been an activist because she had scares all down her back," Puff remembers.

Today, the Owen house is only one of two sites in Shawnee County the National Parks Service recognizes for harboring slaves, even though Puff says at least 30 existed at one time.

The Owen family built the house around 1856 and although its seen additions and renovations, many are grateful the fire didn't destroy this structure with such a storied past.

Puff hopes that the road to recovery will be complete by June. That's when the Underground Railroad National Conference plans to hold its annual meeting right here in Topeka.