Wednesday, July 22, 2009
West on 24
I discovered something interesting about my camera, if you have a memory stick, it only takes 10 pictures. leaving Cawker City the next order of business was finding a memory stick, and stuck in Western Kansas off of I-70.We ended up in Osborne and Hank's Hardware Store, down the street was the county court house.
Sat in a square with a wide lawn,sunflowers growing on the corner and some interesting designs on the stairs.
Largest Ball of Twine
So what year was it ,in the movie "National Lampoon's Vacation" when Chevy Chase as the father of a family going cross country said "Hey kids, we are minutes away from the largest ball of twine". I remember my cousin being here and we were reading a AAA guide or something and he exclaimed "I thought that was just for the movie".
Salina is about 100 miles west on I-70, we peeled off north for a half hour to 24 and then west for about an hour to Cawker City,near Waconda Lake. The bourchure says the following. In 1953 a local farmer started the ball,it grew and grew and in 1961 he gave the ball to the city. In 1973 the Guiness Book of World Record certified the ball in 1973. On May 10,2007 it weighed at 18,032 lbs, and contains 7,839,327. And it grows every day even by own hand. 2000 Cencus gives the population at 521 . A sourviner shop with handmade salt shakers,coffee mugs and T-shirts contained a map and visitors are encouraged to put a pin in the map , all 50 states are represented and dozens of countries.I am sure it's not the states biggest tourist attraction but it's gotta be right up there.
It's also the childhood home of Silent Movie Actress Claire Windsor
Sunday, July 19, 2009
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.
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.
Saturday, June 27, 2009
Seeking the Good Life in Johnson County and the Edge City
Date of trip:June 20,2009
Last Saturday on the way to watching a Rain Delay and 8 Innings of decent baseball between the Royals and the Cardinals I went to one of the buildings at the Johnson County Museums. We did not make it to the All 1950's electric house. That is a trip for another day.
Edge City is defined in Wiki as:
"Edge city is an American term for a concentration of business, shopping, and entertainment outside a traditional urban area in what had recently been a residential suburb or semi-rural community. The term was first used in Tom Wolfe's 1968 novel The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test and popularized in the 1991 book Edge City: Life on the New Frontier by Joel Garreau, who established its current meaning while working as a reporter for the Washington Post. Garreau argues that the edge city has become the standard form of urban growth worldwide, representing a 20th-century urban form unlike that of the 19th-century central downtown. Other terms for the areas include suburban activity centers, megacenters, and suburban business districts."
As Johnson County could be a textbook example of suburban sprawl,much of the museum is dedicated to how farm lands became the burbs, whether you use the term the burbs,bedroom communities,or as the museum frequently uses the term Edge Cities.
After a brief introduction film in the first room, a couple of rooms are dedicated to early Indian settlements, the Mission at Shawnee and Bleeding Kansas. These rooms were interesting because the origins of some of the street names can be found. I always wondered why there was a street named Black Bob. The explanation is:
(again from Wiki, but it explained at the museum)
"Black Bob/Wa-wah-che-pa-e-hai is the name of a Native American Chief. He was the chief of a Shawnee band, originally a part of the Hathawekela division of the Shawnee. Known as the Chaliawa in French term Chalaqua. About the year 1826 they separated from their kindred, then living in eastern Missouri on land granted to them about 1793 by Baron Carondelet, near Cape Girardeau, then in Spanish territory, and removed to Kansas, where, by treaty with their chief, Black Bob, in 1854, they were given rights on the Shawnee reservation in that state. Under Black Bob's leadership they refused to remove with the rest of the tribe to Indian Territory in 1808, but are now incorporated with them, either in the Cherokee Nation or with the Absentee Shawnee or in Ohio with Morning Star Shawnee Nation/Chaliawa who are documented in 2007 as Blood Decent. (From the Access Genealogy website And the Ancestry Book of the Family of Decent.)"
Strangline comes from a train that linked the area, another odd name for the streets.
Once Statehood came and Bleeding Kansas was put behind the area, we see the growth of suburbia,pictures of Victorian Houses,families and into the 1950's.Highways , as the county is the meeting point between the great I-35 running North and South Border to Border and I-70 linking the east to the West.Shopping malls are celebrated and as the museums people came to the area whether farmers to bed room community dwellers seeking The Good Life.
The Museum didn't make much of an impression on me at first, only as I began to think about it and what a prime example Johnson County is of the whole suburban boom of the post war era.Fittingly it's across from a park and close to apartments and strip malls and easily accessible on the I-35 loop that circles the Kansas City Metropolitan area.
Thursday, June 4, 2009
US Displinary Barracks- Fort Leavenworth
some links about the USDB and cemetary
There is a new USDB but it's off the driving tour. The Cemetary is fasinating,over 200 people are buried there whose bodies were never claimed by family. The graves are pointed in North/South direction as opposed to the National Cemetary were the graves are pointed in East/West seeing the rising and setting sun. It does not take a complex internet search to see what they did to earn a stay in the barracks.
The last row is prehaps the most interesting one, 14 German POWs.They have their own row and interesting were the only graves decorated this week after Memorial Day. The flowers as shown in the pictures are Red,Yellow and Black, the colors of the German flag.
So ends the visit to Leavenworth
Fort Leavenworth
To continue the journey through Leavenworth.
A brief history of the Fort from Wiki
It had been a long time since I've been on a Military base and it is it's own little city. Coming in the gate to the right was the commissary which looks like a box store ,big parking lot and Commissary spelled out in big letters on the side of the building. First to get in you got to have ID and the driver needs insurance. We had to get out of the car, step away from the car and open the trunk ,hood and all the door. It was no big deal, took but a few minutes and the reason is obvious.
The bluff overlook the river is beautiful (shown in the Lewis and Clark entry). There is a Musuem with the carriage used by Lincoln when he visited the area. The book store had a wide variety of stuff,I came away with a coffee mug, a couple of books about ghosts who enhabit the fort and a postcard of the Federal Prison that is next door.
There is a driving tour available which hits 16 spots ranging from the parade ground,driving by the Command and General Staff College, the National Cemetary and the old US Displiary Barracks and the Buffalo Solider Monument. I know the Buffalo Solider story first from the song by Bob Marley. The second group was formed at the fort.
When we went to the Monument we saw a group of bikers, must have been over a hundred from the Buffalo Solider Motorcycle club also visiting the Monument.
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