Kalvesta

Kalvesta is the only significant populated place in what remains of Garfield County. In the late 1880s, there was a fierce and violent rivalry between Ravanna and Eminence for the Garfield County seat, but it all came to nothing when the Kansas Supreme Court determined that the county had not been properly organized and annexed it to Finney County instead. 

Kalvesta itself has a little co-op, some abandoned old buildings, a lot of small houses, and a farm implement business. Our friend Keith once dated a girl from here and was chased across the countryside in a pickup truck as a result, but that's a story for another place and time.

Pierceville

We encountered a scary mud patch in the Mansfield Road, so we turned around and took the long way around to Pierceville. (We've learned our lesson about trying to drive through muddy spots.)

This is a small town with a number of houses, some grain elevators, and a few streets. The land around here seems to be mostly corn and cattle. 

The sign at the edge of town declares that "Pierceville is Opportunity," and that must have been why the original settlers founded it back in 1872. It has a long history of pioneers, cattle ranchers, and one infamous Cheyenne raid. 

A couple other things we noticed: There is a community building that houses the Pierceville Go-Getters 4-H club, as well as a federated church here. Pierceville seems determined to hang on, even in these days of urbanization.

Mansfield

When we tried to get to Mansfield, we found nothing but a sand quarry on private property. Myrick was thinking about trespassing, but then he saw the sign forbidding it. Just down the dirt road from here, there's an archery range. There are also millions of sunflowers along the roadside.

Friend

A few families still live in the area. There are some old, abandoned structures, the Friend School is still here, and of course there's a grain elevator by the railroad tracks.

Wolf Station

Wolf Station was one of many grain elevator railroad stops in Finney County. Most of them are now non-existent, inaccessible, or consumed by Garden City. But we were excited to find a sign for this one, which is still in operation!

The RR stops we didn't (or couldn't) find this time were:

• Peterson
• Ritchal
• Lowe
• Rodkey
• Gillespie
• Alfalfa
• Tennis
• Gano
• Quinby

Holcomb

Holcomb is a surprisingly large town not too far from Garden City. It has elementary, middle, and high schools, some small businesses, lots of housing, a cute little park and swimming pool, and many culs-de-sac. 

On the fence in front of the elementary school, there's a sign with the message, “Show your HORNS,” which refers both to the school mascot (a longhorn) and to a character program focusing on:

Honest
Own It
Respect
Nice
Safe

It's a pretty good list of character qualities, even though some list elements are adjectives and others are verbs (or maybe nouns).

A community festival was going on in the park when we were there, which suggests that it's a fairly tight-knit little town.

Oh, and also, Holcomb is famous for being the site of the murders that inspired Truman Capote's In Cold Blood. Two interesting facts about that book:

1. Capote's childhood friend Harper Lee (of To Kill a Mockingbird fame) came with him to help warm the townsfolk up to his questioning. 
2. We go to Sunday school with some distant relatives of the Clutters who were killed here.

I guess it's kind of a small world -- in Kansas, anyway.

Plymell

In Plymell, we saw a church, a school, and seven mailboxes. 

The boys got out to play at the school, just across the road from what they called "the Plymell mansion." And, of course, they could not leave until they'd played a rousing round of gaga ball.

The surrounding countryside is very flat and was planted with corn. The landscape is all but treeless, just like it was when the first settlers came to Finney County in the late 1800s. Most of the farmsteads we saw around Plymell had junipers planted around them as windbreaks. That makes a lot of sense because junipers are hardy once they've taken root, and also because they keep the wind at bay even in the winter.

We also noticed a lot of oil derricks, especially as we went south toward Haskell County. There's (black) gold in them hills plains!

Garden City

 

We decided to sell our house, and on the day we listed it, Magen asked me, "Do you wanna go toddling?"

Why, yes. Yes I did.

So we decided to head back to southwest Kansas until the house sold, using Garden City as our headquarters and knocking out as much as we could of Finney County and its neighbors. 

We drove to Garden City after I finished work Friday night, and then we toured around it some between trips to other counties. Our favorite part was the amazing aquatic center, Garden Rapids at the Big Pool. We swam there three times in two days! The lazy river and waterslides were outstanding, and the cold water felt great after days of driving through the Kansas heat and dust.

The town itself is fair-sized, just under 30,000 people. There are a lot of meat packing and agricultural jobs in the area, as well as a community college, library, and various businesses. It's one of the most ethnically diverse towns in Kansas; more than half of the population is Hispanic, and there are also large immigrant communities from Somalia and Asia. There are, of course, many white rural Kansans here, too, and this sometimes creates unexpected contrasts. When we were at the pool, we saw a group of Latinas sunbathing in bikinis right next to Mennonite girls splashing around in ankle-length swim dresses. They were all there to enjoy the cool water on a hot day, and they didn't seem to think twice about their differences from the other pool patrons.

While we were here, we saw a truck that had an encounter with either a very large mosquito or a normal-sized bird.