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. 

 

Baxter Springs

Baxter Springs is a town with a lot of parks. In fact, we saw three parks before even getting into the city limits!

The town has several claims to fame, including (as the town sign says) being the Birthplace of Waterjet Cutting. Another sign declares it to be "The first cowtown in Kansas."

Long before white settlers came to this part of the country, the Osage tribe often stopped in this area to enjoy the natural mineral springs here. Those springs used to flow right alongside the road through town, though they no longer do. 

The town has a lot of nice older homes and a historical society. Unlike many older towns we've been through, there weren't many homes in a state of disrepair. It felt like a community where people really cared about their buildings and land. There was also a downtown with several shops.  

 

Purcell

Purcell is a small neighborhood surrounding St. Mary's Catholic Church. The town was founded around 1886, and the church was erected around 1898. While there, we took a ride on this playground device, which we dubbed the St.-Mary's-Go-Round.

Leona

Leona is a small town with some friendly folks, an old co-op, a small park, and some defunct businesses. There's not much more to see these days.

The town was named after the first child born here: Leona Schock, daughter of the president of the town's organizing company. Somewhat amusingly (though it was probably not humorous at the time), the town's schoolhouse was stolen sometime between the spring rains and the beginning of the fall term in 1867.

Severance

Severance is a small town with a long and interesting history. The welcome sign says it was established in 1877, which was the year of its incorporation. However, the townsite was laid out in 1869, and settlers had been living in the area since at least 1854.

Severance was the site of several conflicts. For example, the railroad depot (built in 1874) was a violation of an agreement with Joel Ryan of Ryan's Station and resulted in a lawsuit. A more tragically violent example is that C. C. Clonch, the owner of the first cabin in the area, fatally shot two other settlers (Swintz and Waggoner) in 1855. He killed them with a single blast from his shotgun as they attacked him.

Other interesting events in the town's history include an 1896 baseball game between Civil War veterans and their young daughters. (The daughters won.)

These days, this is a little farm town where we saw lots of hills, as well as kids playing at the park. The houses and buildings seemed pretty old. Many were in good repair, and others were less so. The folks here are friendly, and one nice lady talked to us for quite a while. She said they used to have a couple of churches and a school, but they no longer do.

Bendena

Bendena is a small town with an insurance agency, a propane provider, a feed store, a few houses, and a park with some really fun swings. We stopped on this windy morning to stretch our legs and try the park out. We approved!

One fun fact about Bendena: It was named after the sweetheart of a railroad telegraph operator. The town's original name was intended to be "Albers," but the U.S. Postal Service deemed this to be too similar to other town names.

Osage City

 Osage City was pretty large and contained lots of businesses and things to do. It was sprawling; everything was spread over a pretty wide area. We played in Lincoln Park, where the boys especially enjoyed an old retired tank.

We decided to have dinner at Marilynn's Place at 12th and Laing. It's a clean, friendly local establishment with burgers and fries, steak and potatoes, and many types of fresh-made pie. They also had several salad options. It was a good meal; we'd eat there again.

It was a great way to end a fun (and unseasonably warm) January day. We headed home full of satisfying home cooking and even more satisfying memories of another great day exploring Kansas.

Tonganoxie

Tonganoxie is a charming little town with a number of modest, well-maintained homes in quiet neighborhoods. It also has a historic downtown, a number of restaurants and bars, some nice parks and schools, and a water park.

We saw families walking and biking to the water park together. The park where we played was really nice, with clean restrooms, excellent play equipment, soccer fields, and tennis courts.

According to the town website, Tonganoxie has doubled in size since 2000. From what we saw, it seems to have a very promising future ahead of it.

Just a little way from the edge of town, the Tonganoxie Historical Society maintains a site with beautiful historic buildings from around the region. We'd like to go back sometime to explore this site.

Pratt

We went to Pratt for my cousin's wedding reception. On our way down I-70, we hiked up to the Guard of the Plains (here's another picture of it). The boys were excited to see the sculpture, and we'd like to go back next time it works with our driving schedule.

The reception was fun; we met a lot of new family and renewed acquaintance with some we'd known a long time. Afterwards, we decided to explore Pratt.

We quickly found a park, which was fun to visit. After playing for a while, though, we grew hungry. 

I was intrigued by Donald's Serva-Teria Smorgasbord, but alas, they were closed. (However, if Yelp is to be believed, we didn't miss much.)

Finally, we settled on some tacos from Taco Delite. Nothing fancy; just a hometown taco place.

Pratt was a nice, quiet little Kansas town: It had a lot of businesses, a community college, lots of parks, and what Kansas town would be complete without at least one grain elevator? 

A fun place to visit, and many nice people here.

St. Francis

After some searching, we finally found a little gas-station diner that was open for breakfast on Sunday of this Independence Day weekend.

The food was good, the bathrooms were clean, and we were glad to have a brunch of pancakes after our early-morning adventures.

After breakfast, we headed over to the park, which we had scouted out while looking around for a place to eat. Like the rest of the town, the park was nice and well-maintained. Though it was only 10 a.m., the sun was beginning to heat up, as it tends to do  on bright July days in Kansas.

One very interesting thing about St. Francis (and Cheyenne County, of which it is the seat): For such a small, rural area, it has a pretty impressive Web presence.

In all, this was a friendly little town, and we were glad for a chance to stop there.

Ellis

Ellis is a small, historic community with a finger on the pulse of the past. Although it has only about 2,000 residents, it is home to two museums: The Ellis Railroad Museum and the Walter P. Chrysler Boyhood Home and Museum. Regrettably, neither was open when we rolled into town.

We stopped here for fuel. We started out at the Love's, but upon seeing a severe gas leak at one of the pumps there, we promptly decamped to the Kasey's General Store across the street.

After filling up, we took a look around downtown. There was a large, well-maintained park behind the railroad museum. There were also a train car and an old wagon, which we promptly climbed all over.

My biggest disappointment here was that the railroad museum wasn't open, so we couldn't let the boys ride on the BK&E Miniature train. All the same, it was a very pleasant little town with lots of character. The fountain downtown was beautiful, and it seemed like it would be a great place to visit again someday.

As we drove out of town, I found myself reflecting on I-70. So far, we had driven more than 200 miles on this highway, which runs through Kansas on its way between Utah and Maryland. A hundred years ago, this journey between Topeka and Ellis would have been long and arduous. Now, it's a few hours of smooth driving.

It occurred to me that I-70 is a lot like an artery. It flows through grasslands, over and under and mountains, and across mighty rivers. It is a manmade marvel, engineered to provide a smooth surface over unforgiving terrain. And what flows through this artery? Our automobiles. (Thanks, in part, to Mr. Chrysler, of Ellis, KS.)

The interstate was created specifically to provide a hospitable environment for the soulless servants with hearts of wrought metal and feet of rubber that whisk us from place to place beneath this endless blue sky.

We cannot forget, of course, that our servants must eat. Every so often along the interstate, feeding stations pop their heads up by the roadside. We insert plastic pledges into these stations, promising to pay them half a day's labor if they will feed our hungry automatons. Once satisfied with our promise, the stations disgorge the remains of creatures long-dead into the waiting stomachs of our servants.

After this great automotive thirst is slaked, we drive on, powered by a series of tiny explosions that our bondslaves generate and translate into angular momentum -- into hundreds and hundreds of highway miles.

And so we continue on west, along I-70, into the face of the declining sun...

Olsburg

Olsburg was a wonderful surprise. The city park was nice and new, with bathrooms and a wooden train. The pool looked very inviting, too. It was a great place to get out and play. It's really impressive what they have accomplished in this little town of just over 200 people.

This is probably the second most Swedish town I have ever seen, right after Lindsborg. (Let's face it -- it's hard think of anything more Swedish than a Dala Horse factory.) The people of Olsburg seem to be very proud of their Swedish heritage, and it's nice to see a community come together through shared history.

One of our favorite features at the park was the sand digger. Our 4-year-old was pretty good at working this device, and the 2-year-old showed some real promise, too.

We liked the park's soft recycled rubber tire mulch quite a bit. Our 2-year-old falls sometimes falls down when he gets over-excited, so the soft rubber was great for him.

Magen tried out the monkey bars. Here she is being awesome, swinging from bar to bar through sheer upper body strength...

Or not.

Olsburg was a great place to visit. The park would be a terrific venue for a family reunion or picnic.

Louisville

On the road from Newbury to Louisville, we crossed Correction Road not once, not twice, but three times. I guess whatever they were trying to "Correct" was not cooperating with their efforts.


Soybean fields lined the road, peppered with occasional dried-out cornstalks left over from the last harvest. The young bean plants reached up eagerly toward the intermittent raindrops, keen to drink all they could before the long, hot July ahead.

Louisville, like so many small Kansas towns, seems a bit rundown and is losing residents. However, a few things made me think they are doing their best in the face of the grim future.

Downtown, an old school building has been transformed into a thrift shop. It's a great way to repurpose the space, and it seemed to be pretty well-stocked (though it wasn't open while we were in town).

Outside the thrift shop, there was a little park with lots of big tractor tires. It also had a dilapidated old slide in a grievous state of disrepair, but someone cared enough to block it off with orange safety fencing so adventurous children wouldn't hurt themselves on it.

And in the cemetery just outside of town, we were both impressed and amused by the number of trash barrels and signs admonishing visitors not to litter. It has to be some kind of cemetery record for number of trash barrels per square foot. Of course, the cemetery was not without its problems -- someone apparently took liberties with the orientation of a gravestone in the not-too-distant past.

All in all, Louisville wasn't in bad shape. Not too much going on, but the folks there seem to take some pride in their community.

Rock Creek

 Rock Creek is a tiny town with lots of pretty yards and nice flower beds. Oh, and goats. It sure seemed like there had to be more goats there than there were humans.

We love city parks, so we were delighted to find one here, despite the town's diminutive size. Of course, it wasn't as big or as fancy as some we've been to...

All the same, the boys had at least as much fun at this park as they have at any other one we've visited so far.

It's amazing how much a small kindness can matter to those it touches. I hope the person who created this park feels a blessing as great as the joy that their gift brought my boys.

Zeandale

There's not a whole lot to see in Zeandale. The homes are neat and well-maintained, and there's a small community center with a park nearby. Apparently, there is (or at least used to be) a group of community artists called the Zeandale Arts Project here.

We enjoyed stopping for a while -- the boys especially approved of the tall twin slides that allowed them both to go down at the same time.

The town was originally founded in the 1850s, so enthusiasts of Kansas's pioneer days might find a visit worthwhile. Nearby Pillsbury Crossing (over historic Deep Creek) is a beautiful spot, so my family visited it often when I was growing up.

A very informative master's thesis by Marilyn Louise Geiger on Zeandale Township is available at Archive.org. Another, much shorter, history paper by Leota Boisclair on the same topic is available at Lost Kansas Communities. The Riley County Historical Museum also has an interesting page on Josiah Pillsbury, the namesake of Pillsbury Crossing and the man who named Zeandale.

Andover

Andover is a curious mixture of suburban and rural.

As you might expect from a town so close to Wichita, it is bustling with life and commerce. It has the chain restaurants, cookie-cutter housing developments, and enormous high school that you would normally expect to see in such a place.

But Andover also has a charming rural side. There's a dirt county road just down the road from the huge, gleaming high school. The parking lot at the park across from city hall is gravel. The park itself features a lake, with geese, trees, muddy shores, and a tall windmill overlooking it all.

Across the road, City Hall is next door to the public library, and the architecture of both buildings features agrarian shapes and colors in a modern configuration.

The boys had a lot of fun playing in this park -- the equipment was well-used and well-maintained. We'd definitely visit again if we needed a place to stop on our way from Wichita to El Dorado. I'd also love to get a look at the inside of the library, which was closed when we passed through town.

Miles today: 256.

Carbondale

I was sorry to see so many vacant storefronts in downtown Carbondale. This old coal-mining town was once prosperous because of the railroad. And, as the Iron Horse declined, so did her favorite children. (I have a feeling this is going to be a recurring theme in small-town Kansas.)

One bright spot was the City Park, which was created by the town's Lions Club. The boys had a lot of fun playing on the slide, and they also made some new friends who were long-suffering with the boys' desire to push them on the merry-go-round.

Carbondale still does have some economic life coursing through its veins: It is home to a large retirement community, along with the clinic and pharmacy that serve the retirees. Hopefully, this will help the town to survive and make a new future for itself in northeast Kansas.

Update, 10/4/2014:
As we returned home through Carbondale today, we saw a hardened perpetrator evading arrest in front of us. The police cruiser flashed its lights as an officer exited the passenger side to pursue the suspect on foot. She was soon outrun, however, and her partner picked her up to resume the chase in the vehicle. 

Ultimately, the chase ended outside of a small home, where the perp, a sandy-colored terrier, fled inside. The officers let her go, presumably because they had a more pressing call elsewhere on the mean streets of Carbondale...