High Plains

Date of Trip:October 16,2010

I recall my first trip west last year and being fasinated by the wind farms, miles and miles of Tall, lean white windmills dotting farm lands between Salina and Russell on I-70. The overwhelming image I had on what would be the longest trip I have taken since the mission to explore Kansas,was not taken with a camera,but lives in the minds eye. The wind farms at night.It's really dark in that stretch of road, the towns are all miles off the highway and the dark sky has a beauty all it own. To the north they are dotted with red lights,obviously used for air travel, the funny thing was they blink on and off in what is almost a dance to no music. In the car we were listening to a biography of John Wayne, so that couldnt be it. Heading west we timed the first view of the sentenial like windmills at 10 miles. So it was a few minutes before we reached the farms itself and the cause of the blinking was revealed. The blades whirling around cut out the red light for a brief moment. It was beautiful to watch the ballet of red dots against the black night.


The weekend was also a time of Fall festivals,a corn husking contest at the Buffalo Bill statue near Oakley to the Maple Leaf festival in Baldwin.

As we have gone on this trips, a bucket list has emerged, County court houses. I love the town square feel to them,mainly because we in Topeka have the Capital Building, the court house is a gross looking 1950's look to it.Most of the courthouses are old,situationed in the town square with mom and pops stores around them. As we found in December in Yates Center,wonderful christmas lights, 3 hit county court houses, in Sharon Springs,Goodland and Oakley. Plus a beautiful court house in Cheyenne Wells,Co.

Mount Sunflower is the highest point in Kansas at 4 thousand feet. It is not a mountain at all by the high point of several hills. It lays 11 miles down this road and 2 miles up that road from US-40. Or you get there from I-70, same directions, 12 miles here and 2 miles there. Either way you pass farm land,cows grazing and occasionally passing the road.

The Summit includes a picnic area,a mailbox with a guestbook and stories about a wedding conducted there on a New Years Day in bitter cold, some iron works and a note that Colorado is at the first fence in the distance, about a half mile away.

Please to note I made it all four states in this calendar year and Jan 29,2011 is the 150th Birthday of Kansas Statehood.

Thoughts on Western Kansas

I was in the 8th grade and my best friend Gary Long moved from Topeka to Bennington, I went to visit him, I think I took the bus to Salina and was picked up,spent a week and had a blast. I remember seeing "The Muppet Movie" in Salina, going to a tractor pull, which was a blast and Bennington had a drug store with fountain drinks and you could sit there. I have never been further west than that point since then. I've flown west to Northern California and Arizona but Western Kansas has been a mystery to me. Knowing when I flew the plane made connections in Dallas, It's possible I've never flown over points West of Salina.

The legend is Western Kansas and all of Kansas is flat as a pancake, certain things prove that out,on a bright partly cloud unusually cool day, the towns identified by the grain elevators and church spires can be seen for miles and miles.At times it seems you are never going to get there.
Case in point to get to Russell, Kansas off highway 18, you turn onto 281 and soon see a sign saying 16 miles. a mile later on the horizon is the grain elevators of Russell. You do go over hills and valleys and lose the horizon,so Kansas is definitely not flat as a pancake but another hill and the grain elevator returns.

The towns are sparse, hooking up with 24 North of Salina,Glen Elder passes by in the blink of an eye, a lake that I had thought was called Glen Elder but is called Waconda, then Cawker City,home of the largest ball of twine. Downs passes by in the blink of an eye,then Osborne,Alton Bluffs,Stockton,Hills City,Nicodemus and our destination the Cottonwood Ranch, just outside of Studley.The self guided tour tells us the Ranch is in the valley of the South Soloman River. If Kansas is so flat why is there a South Soloman River Valley.

If you want to eat in one of these town, you take what you can get. None of the multiple exits of Salina and Abilene on I-70. I didn't plan on eating at Pizza Hut in Hill City, I might have been surprised there was a Pizza Hut in Hill City.It might serve as the town salad bar,it seemed to as 2 different people came in just to get a salad while we were there.

I noticed a time line in the State, Leavenworth,Lawrence,Lecompton,Topeka,Mission and towns/Cities in the Eastern part of the state were founded in the 1850's and found themselves embroiled in Bleeding Kansas and the Major National Issue of the Day.Cawker City was founded in 1870 by 4 people who ended up in the wrong place.The founders of the town decided on the name over a poker game. E.H. Cawker won.

The Cottonwood Ranch was settled by John Fenton Platt,who emigrated from Yorkshire in 1880,he farmed Sheep and the area was soon populated by his family members.The history of Nicodemus is more storied, as described here:
http://www.nps.gov/nico/

Damar has yet another history,In 1884 President Grover Cleveland signed a document entitling Francis St. Peter to 160 acres sold for $400.My educated guess is Homesteaders ? French Canadians followed, they began to call the town "Acadia of the West" , the St Joseph's church was built in the early decade of the 20th century.

Russell has totally different story, 60 families from Ripon,Wisconsin came to a water stop on the Union Pacific Railroad in 1871. Unlike other towns in the area, It was not settled by Volga Russian,Czech,Germans,Swedes, England or French Canadians.Russell,Kansas is the home of two US Senators,Robert Dole and Arlen Spector of PA.Signage of I-70 reminds you have the heritage of the area settlers,Czech festivals in Wilson,Little Sweden in Lindsburg.The Cafe in Damar sports a French flag,the melting pot of American is all around you in Western Kansas and doing very well. Now on to the specifics of the trip, but no matter what I saw, these thoughts of the flat lands, or not and the little communities are what stays with me.