Sunday, February 16, 2020

Girard


Girard is the county seat of Crawford County. Out in front of the county courthouse is a nice big lawn, complete with a gazebo and a helicopter on display honoring the town's veterans. 

Downtown are some shops and a bar called "Bender on 7." The town also has a park, a swimming pool, and a lovely sesquicentennial display of decorative quilt squares.

Perhaps surprisingly to those who know Kansas as a solid "Red State" Republican party holdout, Girard used to be a bastion of the Socialist Party, especially from the 1890s through the 1920s. Fred Warren, a citizen of Girard, commissioned Upton Sinclair to write The Jungle, and the notorious Socialist politician Eugene V. Debs lived in the town in the early 1900s. 







 

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