Eagle Springs

Our first attempt to find Eagle Springs, on 8 June 2019, was an utter failure. But at least it was a pleasant one.

First of all, why Eagle Springs? Well, I found it in the USGS list of populated places, and it killed me to think of leaving any county incomplete (Doniphan was one of the first counties we fully finished.)

We started out by driving on I-70 through the rolling hills of northeast Kansas. They were clad all in green, in honor of the rain-drenched early summer we've had. On the drive, we were struck by the abundance of trees on all sides and of water almost overflowing its riverbeds. (Kansas does have other features besides the vast western tracts of wheatfields and windfarms.)

My first inkling that we weren't on the right track was that Google Maps had us going somewhere between McLouth and Tonganoxie. This was a bit troubling, because I thought I remembered seeing this interesting page, which puts Eagle Springs about two miles north of Sparks. However, I couldn't access the internet on the backroads of Douglas County, so we continued on, having faith in the GPS coordinates we'd confirmed from this site and this one.

It turns out those coordinates (39.1311119, -95.1771923) were BOGUS! They led us far astray. But here's the good part: We had to drive along several miles of dirt roads, which meant we were going slow enough to roll down our windows. On the drive, we saw barbed wire / electric fences (yes! on the same fence!), blooming wildflowers, cattle, and several folks using the sunny Saturday morning to mow their lawns. We also saw and heard quite a choir of our state bird, the Western Meadowlark. So this red herring wasn't a total loss.

Eagle Springs is a ghost town, so we don't REALLY have to see it. There is some interesting stuff online about it, though. It's even featured in a Kansas Geological Survey report about Kansas's mineral springs. But what fascinates me the most is the man who tried to make it into a tourist resort, early settler named Pryor Plank. He first staked his claim in 1855 and blazed a warning to claim jumpers on one of his walnut trees: "If any man jump this place he will have bad luck. Pryor Plank." There's a fuller account of Plank and his resort at the beginning of this issue of the Northwest Missouri Genealogy Society Journal, and this site I mentioned earlier also has more details and a better map.

We definitely want to see the remains of the resort if we can make it up that way again. And if we do, we won't believe our fool GPS.