Last from Fort Scott

These always send chills down my bones. The bill of sale for slaves.

Interior pictures

a couple of Cannons, a field medical kit,dolls with hickory nuts used as heads,a jail cell in the brig

Fort Scott Jan 16,2010

Some pictures walking around the parade grounds. The Long white building is the horse stable. The buildings with Greek Columns are Officer Row.

Return to the Road

The last entry I did was in early December and a trip to St. Joe. Outside of the Casino were we ate on the bank of the Missouri River I took a picture of a Wonderful sunset. I posted it on some message boards I am on and got good comments. I had a feeling as I looked at the river that day,I was the last good day of 2009. I knew snow was in the forecast for Tuesday and the river would be snow packed if not iced up. Little did I realize how right my thoughts were.

We did have snow and icy conditions on that Tuesday. It was nothing compared to the three weeks that began on Christmas Eve.Told to go home at Noon on Christmas we at work scraped our wind shields and wondered how bad the slide home would be. Stopping at a quick shop near a hill,I watched a car slide backwards to flat land. It really had not yet begun to snow. 3 days it stopped. 13 inches with epic snow drifts. Someone wrote of driving an hour and half in the blizzard to go 20 miles. I noticed an area where because of the drifts you could see the ground, right next to two feet of drifts. At some point I had to laugh, one because the multude of people of who urn for a white Christmas got what they wanted and then some, and two I picked up several books on my stops in 2009 dealing with the frontier and the trials that ran through Kansas. True I was in a heated home and not out in the wilds, but I got the story of what they saw. When we were in Lincoln,Nebraska one of the glass painting depicted the Blizzard of 88 or some year.The guide asked if Kansas had any stories of the blizzard, I didn't think so, but I can now say , We remember and aren't likely to forget the Christmas Blizzard of 2009. Just to set the record, more snow fell the week between Christmas and New Year and more fell the first weekend of 2010.


Later that week, we were visited with bitter cold and wind chills in negative 20 range.That having passed, 40's and certain snow meltage and we could dream of more trips.... That has now come to pass.

Fog warnings did not stop us. So we went to Fort Scott,Kansas. The heaviest fog seemed to burn off the further East we went.and turning south on 69 it wasn't bad.

On to the Fort.

Fort Scott opened in the 1840's as part of a chain on the Indian Frontiers, the guidebook says the intent was to keep the Indians on one side and the non Indians on the other side. Dragoon fought in the Mexican-American War. Fort Riley,near Junction City opened in the 1850's and Fort Scott closed. Here is where the story gets interesting.

The buildings were sold and one of the officers quarters became a Free state hotel and one, on the other side of the parade ground became a Pro Slave hotel. The guide books speaks of many a drunk brawl. One of the signs contains a quote from a woman whose fiancee had been killed. She wrote in a letter:

"But remember this,I am a girl, but I can fire a pistol and if ever the time comes I will send some of you to a place where theirs 'weeping and knashing of teeth ..." that is one of the most powerful statements coming from Bleeding Kansas I have ever read.

As several battles took place in Kansas and Missouri took place, Fort Scott reopened and was the home of the First Kansas Colored,an infantry unit of Freed Slaves. This unit per dates the unit featured in the movie "Glory", though they haven't gotten a movie about them. This goes to the long held historians belief that the Civil War only took place East of the Mississippi.

The Fort closed in the 1870's,however it took a century to become a part of the National Park system.


The Town of Fort Scott is the County seat of Bourbon County, 2000 Census listed the population around 8,000. It always amazes me the eating opportunities.I've noticed a lot of these smaller towns have a locally owned pizza join, a bar and a subway. GPS gave us about the same eating opportunities in Fort Scott. Mostly we were pointed a half hour down the road to Pittsburg.We ate at a sports bar and watched the first half of the K-State/Colorado basketball game.I noticed almost everyone who came in brought kids. I also noticed the town Christmas decorations were still up, a testament to how bad the winter has been, the epic Christmas snow, the snow just after New Years, the record wind chill and now the fog.


The Fort itself is mostly refurbished buildings, but you do get to see what the Fort looked like. On of my favorite exhibits is a series of photos. The first from the 1860's of the powered explosive building, the next showing evacuations of the site and rebuilding the building. It the round building on the parade ground in the pictures that follow.

Many exhibits talk about the man who designed the fort,Captain Tom Sword,a West Point graduate who wanted to make the Fort the "Crack Post of the Frontier", he favored Greek Archtexture,which can clearly seen in the Posts on the Officer Quarters. The building are unique to anything else I have seen from the time.

On to the Pictures ...