Kniveton

The fields around Kniveton are sown in winter wheat. When we came through, we saw carpets of green stretching out to the horizon on either side of the gravel road. We also saw fields of haybales with a "for sale by owner" sign offering them up to any willing bidder.

Kniveton itself was hard to find; it was really just a few farms strung along the gravel road adjacent to the highway. There was an old railroad depot, and we think the old cemetery we saw down the road used to be called Crocker Cemetery.

In so many of these small dead or dying communities across the state, we see markers of former glory slowly fading away. The farm where we stopped to take our picture had a sign on the fence boasting that it had won the Kansas Bankers Association Award for Soil Conservation in 1983. It felt a lot like the towns that have signs by the road boasting of their winning basketball team in the 1970s.