Padonia

Even in some of the earliest histories of Kansas, Padonia is mentioned as a township where businesses and services were declining. Today, it is more or less a ghost town. Only a small group of houses and a grain elevator and remain, though in the past it also had a mill.

We've loved seeing the kids get old enough to take their own pictures on these little trips. On this occasion, it was raining quite a bit, so the kids did all the photography in the rain while Magen and I stayed in the van and cuddled. Pretty convenient for the parents of this outfit!

One of the most famous residents of Padonia was the poet Ellen Palmer Allerton, who arrived in a covered wagon in 1879. Two of her poetry collections are available on Google Books: Annabel, and Other Poems and Walls of Corn and Other Poems. Here are some lovely lines from "Annabel" that capture the sense of place that permeates her poetry:

Look there, my friend, through yonder clump of trees. 

You see yon lofty, weather-beaten wall?

You hear the hum of wheels, the broken fall 

Of pent up waters borne along the breeze? 

That is the old brown mill. Its walls have stood 

While children's children have grown old and gray, 

While ruthless axes have hewn down the wood,

And yonder town has grown, rood after rood, 

The mill has stood there as it stands today.