Vacation time is approaching SLOWLY ! Planning my next vacation has jarred loose the memories of my last Plains vacation through the state of Kansas. Following the Santa Fe Trail and visiting the Oregon-California and Pony Express trail at Marysville and Hollenberg, Kansas, I spent a week last Autumn traveling the relatively large state. I visited the cities Emporia, Council Grove, Cottonwood Falls, Marysville, Manhattan, Wamego, Larned, Dodge City, Strong City, Hollenberg, Jetmore, Home, Greensburg, Arkansas City, Coffeyville, and Baxter Springs. My wife and I drove home to NW AR through a flood along the old Route 66, a road the state of Kansas would prefer not to maintain. Route 66 in a Ford Focus through the "wagon ruts" with the threat of hydroplaning for 8 hours of nearly non-stop driving nearly dampened our day. We managed to beat the road closure in Missouri because of flash flooding by an hour or so. I loved the trip, but hated the ending in treacherous conditions.
This year, I don't care if flooding is a concern again, I will make it to the Plains to study the Santa Fe Trail again, returning to the Pony Express/Oregon-California Trail into Nebraska, hopefully as far west as Gothenberg Pony Express station to end the visit to the Plains. I'm also hoping to spend some time on the Smoky Hill Trail from Manhattan/Ft. Riley/Junction City perhaps to Ft. Hays/Hays. I am certainly planning to travel through Lyons to Great Bend along the Santa Fe trail I had to skip last year to see the Ft. Zarah site and the birding sites Cheyenne Bottoms Preserve and Quivira National Wildlife Refuge. Lyons is a place I want to visit along the way to Great Bend to check out the Coronado-Quivira Musueum at a Carnegie Library building (one of many Carnegie grant libraries throughout Kansas and America, including Eureka Springs in NW AR). Coronado followed the approximate Santa Fe Trail up to the Smoky Hill River valley to the area near Ft. Riley and Junction City where the Smoky Hill Trail began in the 16th century.
I considered an exclusive visit to the Santa Fe Trail vicinity along the Mountain Route, through Colorado and the Raton Pass into New Mexico, but I may plan a two-week trip to follow the Santa Fe Trail all the way to the city later. I want to visit one of the places in my favorite Townes Van Zandt song White Freightliner Blues where folks will treat you kind. I know the Kansas folks treated me kind there during my stay. I enjoyed the small cafe in Jetmore, between Larned and Dodge City where we seemed to provoke many whispers and stares at our AR license plate. The cheeseburger was superb and the mother-daughter business on the windy Kansas Plains is worth a second visit if I ever reach Jetmore again. I was sorely disappointed with Dodge City, where their history seems to mean nothing to them. I wasted time there though I did see some wagon ruts on the SFT, and saw Ft. Dodge and to the northeast, 64 giant windmills, each setting on a one acre plot. Bent's Fort National Historic site in Colorado is definitely a place I want to visit on a Mountain Route vacation. Nebraska is in the plans for the next trip. I may venture to Atchison, KS on the Missouri border, but have not yet decided because if I go there, I'll have to slip across the border to study St. Joseph along the Pony Express trail.
Last year I spent three days in Emporia, conveniently staying in a hotel next door to the local Starbucks, whom we kept in business for the week and probably allowed them to hire one new barrista. From Emporia(where my wife graduated high school) we traveled to Cottonwood Falls, Council Grove, Manhattan, and Marysville (my wife's hometown) near the Nebraska border and at the site of Marshall's Ferry and the Pony Express barn, which now houses the town museum. We visited Joe's Bar on the main drag visiting a friend of a friend in the quaint little town. The Oregon-California trail is commemorated at Alcove Spring. We passed through Wamego as the original Oz Fest was winding down, celebrating the Wizard of Oz along north-south historic Highway 99. My wife, her sister, and I posed for the touristy picture in front of a state boundary sign beside a cornfield. Nebraska was reached that day, whetting my curiosity for what was beyond the imaginary line.
Cottonwood Falls was the terminus of the Texas Cattle Trail. The Chase County courthouse was a remarkable structure in the little town. Strong City sets near the Tallgrass Prairie National Preserve and the remaining 1881 Jones limestone house and Spring Hill farm and Stock ranch are administered by National Park service. The park rangers are at the barn and the house is a bookstore with many fine selections on Kansas and Plains history to choose from. The Preserve offers front country and backcountry trail options, one trail leading to the Lower Fox Creek School. Bus tours are also offered. The blue-stem grasses of the Flint Hills were also an important historic site of the fattening of the driven cattle before slaughter and processing.
Today, the blue-stem prairie in the Flint Hills region is a source of nutrition for cattle shipped in front other parts of the country. In Dodge City and Emporia, large meatpacking companies perform the deed of making beef look more appealing than the freshly killed carcass of a dead animal can offer. Most folks love meat, but few are willing to perform the slaughter and butcher duties. Excel is a large meat packer in DC and a scenic overlook above the Excel feedlot and processing facilities gives you a good look at the proceedings outdoors, while the Iowa Beef (Tyson-owned) dominates Emporia. My wife's father was a Federal veterinarian at the "Beef", as he called it, for many years. He believed everyone should eat beef. Kansas' economy then as now depends on the industry. The Chisholm Trail Center at Wellington was on my wish-list the day of the flood and my rush back home with flooding reaching the region. The beef industry is a worthy topic of discovery on its own merits. I like to investigate the migration trails, old roadbeds, and cattle trails.
Council Grove was an important rendezvous for travelers seeking company to traverse the hazardous Plains along the Santa Fe Trail reaching either the longer Mountain Route or opting for the shorter desert trail along the Cimarron Route. We visited and had lunch at the Terwilliger House, owned and operated by a descendant of Welsh immigrants who largely moved in as Beecher Bible and Gun abolitionists who would fight for their views if necessary. Dunno if his folks moved in with that group. The Kaw Mission and several other old structures remain dating back to the "Bleeding Kansas" period and before (dating from the passage of the Kansas-Nebraska act in 1854 to the opening of hostilities of the Civil War in 1861). The area was a dangerous place because of Indians and Confederates, who easily entered the Kansas Plains from their bases in Texas and Missouri. The war along the SFT extended to New Mexico where battles and skirmishes occurred between Union and Confederate forces.
I have spent my time in NW AR seeking out and traveling the old roads, particularly the Butterfield Trail/Telegraph Road and other civil war pathways, including the Cove Creek and Mountain roads. Naturally I've followed the old Military Road and the Line Road from Kansas to NW AR and Ft. Smith in the AR River valley. I've visited the Military Road at the site of the Baxter Springs Massacre near Ft. Blair, where Quantrill's band essentially murdered Blunt's command, though lightly armed and carrying a regimetal band, that was wiped out by the raiders. A haunting photo of bandmembers shortly before departure from Ft. Scott, KS to Ft. Smith, AR exists. Sad to see all those faces soon to meet their mortal end. Also killed in the attack was Maj. H. Zarah Curtis, Maj. Gen. Samuel Curtis' son (Gen. Curtis was the commander of the 1862 Winter Campaign through Arkansas that included the Battle of Pea Ridge, ending in the capture of the Mississippi River port, Helena, my hometown). Ft. Zarah was founded on the AR River after Indian troubles in 1864 attracted an army led my Maj. Gen. Curtis to Council Groveand named in honor of the general's late son.
My 2009 trip, the fun part, essentially ended at Larned, where the Santa Fe Trail center and the old Ft. Larned are located. I bought several interesting books at the center and enjoyed the long windy walk around the grounds of Ft. Larned. The stone facade of the fort was defaced through the years of private ownership prior to the Federal government stewardship and was a real bummer. It was interesting to see the graffiti because Roman graffiti is quite important for its study, but I wish I could have seen the gorgeous facades of the rocked buildings as they were after the masons were done. Oh well. I still enjoyed the blasting winds. Along the way to Larned, I saw bicyclists chugging through the blowing tumbleweeds, dust, and trash. Craig Miner, noted Wichita St. Univ. historian studies the Kansas Plains in the saddle. I wonder if I passed him. His book West of Wichita is a must read for the Kansas history enthusiast.
I enjoyed the drive through the Gyp Hills around Medicine Lodge, site of the Carry Nation house and the stockade built there to defend against Indian attacks and the site of a meeting of Indian leaders and Federal troops. The Gyp Hills were laden with great ambush sites in those days. I would love to spend a couple of days at that town. Greensburg, ML, Wellington, Arkansas City, Winfield, and Coffeyville will have to wait for more lengthy visits in the future. Greensburg has been rebuilt after the horrible tornado that wiped out the town. The other towns are rich with history in the picturesque region. Not much about Kansas is flat from my perspective. I've ridden my share of miles in the saddle of a bike and I can vouch for the fact that pedaling the parts of the state I've encountered will improve one's cardio-vascular health immensely, if a heart attack is not suffered in the process.
I can't wait to start the trip to Great Plains this Autumn. I've exhausted most of my reading, so it's time to pick up more books about the history of the region. I have hundreds of miles of migration trails on my map of all the trails of the west. SFT leads either south to Chihuahua or west to Sacramento. My reading of Sherman's memoirs and his California years has picqued my interest. I want to reach the ocean someday and visit the approximate areas he frequented. Fremont's Brigade passed through Council Grove on their way to California when the war with Mexico was unfolding under Pres. Polk (who was a close confidante of Maj. Gen. Pillow, who owned two plantations in present-day Phillips and Lee counties and was responsible for the near disaster at Belmont on the Mississippi River and the disasters at Ft. Donelson and Ft. Henry on the Tennessee and Cumberland rivers).
Enough rambling about the past today. The Plains await. Next topics, maybe: Shiloh, Oxford, MS, the Delta Heritage Trail, and Ft. Scott, KS, more Arkansas state parks, and the wild raging rivers and creeks of NW AR I've frequented in years past. Enjoy some time outdoors.
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