Laundry on the Trail

I love to read historical accounts about settling the West. After finishing a book or primary source, I can’t wait to see visit the locale mentioned. Recently, I’ve driven an eighth of the approximately 2100 mile Oregon Trail where it winds along the Platte in Nebraska and Wyoming. During an overnight stop along the way, I read a pamphlet explaining that settlers camping along the river near modern day Guernsey, Wyoming, named that site Emigrant Washtubs. I easily imagined dust-coated women eagerly awaiting a chance to scrub dirty laundry.

Modern travelers quickly learn that a day in a car where windows magnifying sunrays and fine prairie dust sifts through cracks and crevices leads to funky odors and gritty skin. Imagine folks walking long hours under summer sun as they trailed wagons that raised a perpetual Pig Pen-style dust cloud. The resulting scents and filth had to have been atrocious. To make it worse, those nomads didn’t have multiple changes of clean clothing to start their days. Babes in diapers had it even worse.

 Lillian Schlissel’s Women’s Diaries of the Westward Journey helped me understand these pioneer journeys. The diarists’ words and Schlissel’s commentary bring their travels to life. The author explains women couldn’t maintain regularly scheduled washdays. Instead, they laundered when they camped for more than a day near a substantial body of water. If they were lucky, they’d find enough fuel to heat water. If not, they settled for cold. Without clotheslines, bushes or rocks served to dry wet clothing. One writer mentioned they wore their clothing as it dried.

One diarist, a Rebecca Ketchum, bemoans her skin condition prior to and after laundry day. “Our hands are blacker than a farmer’s and I do not see there is any way of preventing it, for everything has to be done in the wind and sun.” She explains that washday only compounded the damage. “Camilla and I both burnt our arms very badly while washing. They were red and swollen and painful as though scalded with boiling water.”

Jane Gould Tortillott offers another example of laundry difficulties. One Saturday, as her party made camp along the Platte, she tells us, “Gus and I took my clothes to the river to rinse them. Was a little island covered with wild bushes nearby. Gus tried to wade over to it—to hang the clothes but it was too deep so we were obliged to hang them on some low bushes close to the river.”

Catherine Haun, an emigrant from Iowa, anticipated problems and wore a dark woolen dress through most of her journey. She tells us it “protected her from the sun and wind and economized in laundrying which was important considering the lack of ‘wash day’ conveniences.”

My stop at Emigrant Washtubs and subsequent reading of these diaries made me better appreciate  these uprooted women who followed their men west. Not only did they live for months under open skies in unfamiliar and frequently dangerous landscapes, they also managed their laundry without the conveniences of home. I’m more than grateful for my automatic washing machine.

An Unexpected Cooking Lesson

It’s curious how common items either go out of use or their intended purpose alters. One of those is the nutcracker. Most people nowadays think this term refers to a seasonal ballet where they might enjoy watching children or grandkids dressed up as old-fashioned ornamental German nutcrackers wearing military-style hats or as dainty sugarplum fairies. Others may store treasured family heirlooms until they retrieve them to decorate their tree. I recently had occasion to realize that actual nutcrackers frequently found in auction boxes serve a real purpose.

As a kid, my family bought whole nuts at Christmas time and offered them in a decorative bowl along with a metal pincer-style device and a silver pick for getting at hard to reach nutmeats. This practice continued a custom both my parents grew up with during the Depression. Their frugal families passed on a ritual long followed by their ancestors.

At our house, one of those traditions included filling Christmas stockings with an orange, an apple, and either some unshelled peanuts or whole nuts. Knowing many generations practiced this holiday tradition reminds me of a time when fresh fruits and nuts were luxuries one enjoyed only on special occasions. Despite knowing I’d see nuts every holiday that required a special opener, I never considered the nutcracker tool an essential kitchen utensil until I recently received a 5 lb. bag of fresh pecans.

An Oklahoma friend lives near the many groves in Eastern Oklahoma and shared his bounty. When I first saw lumpy grocery sack, I imagined it full of ready to eat pecans. When I opened this treasure trove, I realized my mistake. This freshly picked harvest had gone through a mechanical cracker to make it easier to extract the tasty center. However, I had to peel away shattered outer husks and separate the two pecans halves each shell once protected.  

It didn’t take long to understand why nuts are holiday treats and why some people esteem pies, cakes, cookies, candies, and butters made with them. As a person who considers walnuts, pecans, peanuts, cashews, and almonds edible only when served by themselves but not in baked goods, I missed this message growing up.

After I spent a couple of hours freeing nutmeats from shells, I understand why I find nutcrackers at almost every auction I attend. They were essential in old time kitchens. Cooks didn’t go to the store to buy a sack of already shelled nuts. They roamed creek banks to harvest nature’s encased proteins and then spent hours extracting meats from hulls. Knowing how my grandmas made use of everything, I’m sure they saved the inedible material to create fabric dyes or enrich garden soils.

This lesson humbled me. I’ve enjoyed preparing family recipes from scratch for decades. I never considered how I take for granted buying already-ground flour or churned butter quarters at the market. This nutty experience reminded me that not-so-distant family cooks would consider such easy access to ingredients an extravagance.

What’s Gonna Happen to History?

One of my favorite pastimes is using primary sources such as letters, diaries, old account books, and news stories to interpret the past. Learning about history directly from someone who lived it sparks an interest that brings that era to life better than any textbook can. You can imagine the fun a retired English teacher and self-professed Cather geek is having reading The Selected Letters of Willa Cather.

Once I got over the guilt of reading postings my favorite author never intended for public consumption, I’ve relished every letter. I particularly enjoyed those offering insights into O Pioneers! My Antonia, A Lost Lady, The Professor’s House, Song of the Lark, and Death Comes for the Archbishop.

Her business correspondence reveals how involved this artist was involved in everything from the selection of covers, paper, fonts, and artwork and fascinates me. More personal missives disclose that she loved the West and those who called it home. Here’s a woman who left Nebraska to spend most of her life navigating life in the world’s largest cities. Despite her urban prowess, she tells one mail recipient that she’s “just a corn farmer.” In other notes, she details Southwest adventures and how she hopes her novels set in that locale make its beauty clear to those who’ve never visited.

Her letters aren’t terse communications. She writes so that you sense you’re eavesdropping on private conversation. I loved when she explained how novels poured from her pen. In one passage she mentions how writing is akin to channeling as if she’s the receiver of otherworldly signals. Though she’s been gone decades, I feel like I’m chatting with a friend to learn how her artistic process works.

In addition to insights into this Nebraska novelist’s published collections, Cather offers tidbits about life in the early 1900s. Her readers view Pittsburg, New York, Europe, and Red Cloud to learn about theater, opera, magazine editing, setting up apartments, socializing, and eventually World War I through her observant lens. Her commentary about editing is so frank that I’m sure she’s spinning in her grave to think private words are now public. Her anecdotes about France after the war personalize that tragedy more clearly than anything except battlefield photos can.

As I savor this peek into the past, it makes me wonder what future students of history will lose now that so few of us compose beautifully written conversations with friends, loved ones, and colleagues. Digital contacts are typically brief and to the point, sharing few insights into a writer’s character. Besides, once a computer program is outdated, it’s difficult to access stored material. How many of us have floppy discs we can’t open?

It’s a thrill to crawl inside the mind of a writer I’ve loved since I was a teen. However, this time machine made of postal notes sets off noisy alarms. Good historical research requires access to primary sources. If we have no well-written letters and journals for future historians to examine, scholars lose personal perspectives into the era they study. What a loss!

Colorful Mystery

Memory works in funny ways. With passing time, one event blends with another until, eventually, recollections stitch themselves together like an old patchwork quilt assembled from every leftover scrap lying about the house. Snippets of bright color or interesting texture catch the eye and off a mind goes following a bunny trail that may not go anywhere. I started following one of those winding, backtracking thoughts recently and found myself lost in a mystery. I hope someone can help me find answers.

Since I was tiny, I’ve loved stained glass windows. I enjoy the varying hues, the stories each scene tells, and the way sunlight glows through, tinting everything in its path. Magically, words of hymns and sermons seem to float in that radiant light like waltzing dust motes during Sunday services. My first memories link to the sanctuary windows in the Methodist Church in Meade, Kansas. I loved how distant artists depicted Bible stories and characters in vibrant colors that seemed richer than any shade I could create with my crayons and paints.

Not long after these religious panels engaged my toddler attention, a relative moved into an Victorian two story with a gorgeous stained glass window at the stairway landing between the first and second floors. My cousins and I loved sliding down those stairs, which means we had to climb to that midway point to launch our speedy descents. I don’t know that anyone else dawdled on the way up, but I did. Sunlight radiating through that jewel-toned melted silica joined by lead strips dazed my senses enough that I didn’t feel a single bump on the way down.

Even now, my heart starts beating faster when I discover century-old buildings that contain their original stained glass. Apparently, a goodly number of early settlers found a way to put at least one decorative window in their home or business. For those on a strict budget, that might mean four tiny squares of color soldered in each corner of a rectangle or square. Well-to-do families had more options.

Those with fatter wallets might incorporate several ornamental windows throughout their home. Almost every long-established community has several of these two or three storied houses replete with decorative gingerbread, wrought iron fence work, and stunning glass throughout the property. These make me recollect a world with fewer distractions than ours has. What a joy it would be to look up to see sunlight streaming through amber, lavender, cobalt, ruby, and emerald tones while you were dusting, scrubbing, or cooking.

A trip to Cottonwood Ranch in Studley reveals excellent examples of such a home. The Pratt family members were among the first permanent settlers in that region. Mrs. Pratt immigrated from greener landscapes and struggled with the monotony of her new homeland. To help, her husband built a lovely ranch. Modern visitors see the evidence as they travel from room to room, admiring colorful glasswork in nearly every window.

Here’s the mystery. I want to know where early Kansans bought these windows. I did learn factories that produced these arts works weren’t local. So far, I’ve discovered that some of the big Catholic churches ordered their panels from either the East Coast or Europe. I can’t imagine the shipping costs on these breakables. What intrigues me even more is knowing every little town in this area had homes and churches decorated with these lovely works of art. Where did they come from and at what cost?

The Times They Are a Changin’

I recently read an article explaining the world has entered a new geological age, the Anthropocene. This means future geologists will find human-created residue from radiation, plastics, mining, agriculture, and industry in the earth’s sediments. At this time, scientists haven’t made this official; however, mention in the media indicates the world is evolving. Change unsettles me, so for distraction, I imagined the lives of those who occupied this region I call home. Other than finding bits of worked jasper, chert, and flint in plowed fields and reading stories recounted after the fact in history books, small evidence remains of those who not only survived but also thrived in this arid country west of 98^th meridian.

Despite prospering in this landscape, these cultures weren’t native to this place. They migrated from places like the Black Hills and Wind River Range speaking languages with Algonquin, Shoshonean, and Tanoan roots, which indicates their nations originated from distant parts of this country.

Prior to the arrival of Spaniards who brought horses from Europe, these bands journeyed by foot with the help of domesticated dogs trained to carry small loads. This limited not only their range of movement but also their ability to conquer others. Imagine how swiftly their lives altered when horses introduced faster and more efficient travel and ways to make war.

The grassy Plains provided a perfect setting for this equine culture to flourish. The fleet-footed beasts offered not only transportation and military strength but also wealth nourished by endless acres of sun-fueled grasses. Within a generation, people once limited to foot travel became savvy riders who covered enormous distances while hunting and warring. Historians explain that these adaptable equestrians mastered shooting game and fighting battles while firing up to thirty arrows a minute. Until firearm technology included reliable, repeating rifles and pistols, these archers were what some call “Lords of the Plains.”

Due to their nomadic life style, they adapted to unpredictable weather conditions on the prairie more easily than later arriving immigrants who established permanent residences. Mobility permitted bands to relocate as they exhausted resources or fouled an area. Their expanded ability to harvest native animals and plants generated improved nutrition, better housing, plentiful clothing, and other necessities.

 Buffalo herds numbering in the millions migrated through these grasslands seasonally. Native residents used the entire carcass to produce food, containers, tools, robes, and tipis. If they killed more than they could use, they traded for goods. For early Plains residents, these shaggy beasts functioned as a Walmart on the hoof long before Sam Wall conceived of his big box chain.

Even before the Civil War, Plains tribes saw their world changing. Once railways and roads bisected the prairie, they understood their way of life was under siege. For decades, they fought this transformation, successfully for a time. Once the Great Rebellion ended, new technology and hordes of land-hungry immigrants meant the old order was over. No matter how perfectly adapted these transient cultures were to living on this windy, dry ancient seabed, transformation was inevitable.

When I think of those dark-skinned people camping and hunting in the Smoky Hill, Saline, and Solomon River valleys, I wonder what they’d think of asphalt highways linking little towns that follow their old trails. What would they think of the changes wrought in this new age so heavily influenced by humans?

The Homestead Act and New Trails across Kansas

Imagine reading flyers posted outside the local mercantile that promised affordable land with rich soil, a healthful climate, and railroad access. President Lincoln’s signature on The Homestead Act of 1862 led thousands to respond to these booster mantras. In addition, railroads promoted and profited from newly acquired government lands. As a result, schemers and developers publicized the region labeled “The Great American Desert” on maps as a way to live the good life and get rich at the same time. Man and machine-made trails soon riddled a country once traveled only by game, indigenous peoples, and a few hardy trappers and explorers passing through.

Dreamers and the downtrodden looking for opportunity headed west. W.R. Hill, a developer, joined with African American minister Reverend W. H. Smith to form the Nicodemus Land Company. They promoted a town site and farmsteads along the South Solomon River in western Kansas. One group interested in promises of country filled with plenty of wild game and affordable land included slaves emancipated from former Vice-President Richard Johnson’s estate in Kentucky. This group and others gathered what they imagined they needed to farm their own acres and bought Union Pacific tickets to the Promised Land.

After a long journey, these first immigrants arrived in Ellis in June of 1877. They discovered this was not the end of their travels. They still had a journey of about 35 miles to their new homes. This humble group that began an historic Kansas community walked behind a wagon filled with their meager belongings to begin the Ellis/Nicodemus trail, a route they and other newcomers would travel to and fro many times during the following months and years.

Keep in mind these fresh arrivals were from the South, a well-watered land with established agriculture. They arrived on the high plains at the beginning of summer so they would’ve scanned acres covered with still-green buffalo grass and emerging blue stem rather than thriving farmland. Used to seeing groves of hardwood trees, they’d have wondered at the scarcity of such on the plains and at the lack of variety they’d used to build and warm their former homes. Rivers where they came from were wide and deep, so their first jaunt across Big Creek in Ellis would have triggered some mumbles. What they say when they first saw the Saline and South Solomon?

For the next few years, the Ellis/ Nicodemus Trail became the standard route between the two communities. According to old Ellis Headlight and Nicodemus news articles, these newly minted agriculturists and businessmen brought grain to the mill, broken tools to the blacksmith, and their sick and injured to the company doctor available in the thriving railroad community of Ellis. One report described the excellent quality and quantity of broomcorn delivered by Nicodemus farmers. Another detailed how the railroad doctor set a Nicodemus man’s badly broken leg.

Today, that trail is a memory and a few references in old newspapers. If local historian Angela Bates has anything to say about it, this route will once again be marked and affiliated with the Nicodemus Historic Site. This path offers evidence that peoples of the prairie didn’t live isolated lives. It indicates connections between rural communities that still exist even if the roads between them are different.

Oh You Better Watch Out, You Better Not Cry, Belznickel Is Coming To Town

                One of the bonuses of teaching for so many years is that I’ve learned much from local speakers who have shared their knowledge with my students and me. In  1986, Lawrence Weigel, a regional historian from Victoria, began a tradition of speaking to my classes about local Volga German Christmas customs. Even though my grandma’s family came to America from this region, I’d never heard about the character called Belznickel that Mr. Weigel brought to life in my English classroom.

                This unique Christmas visitor wore a fur or buffalo hide coat and appeared in Volga German homes a few weeks before December 25^th. According to our presenter, not only did this caller dress in rustic, handcrafted clothing, he also wore clanking chains wrapped about his waist to warn youngsters of his arrival. Sometimes he even carried a coiled whip to add to his intimidating presence. I was as wide-eyed as my freshmen were upon learning about this guy for the first time. This wasn’t the Santa we knew and loved.

                My class’s informative guest told us this was an old-country custom intended to reinforce good behavior. Belznickel entered pioneer homes, where children lined up to confess the past year’s bad deeds. After owning up to their naughtiness, youngsters would kneel and pray. Belznickel might leave a piece of candy for repentant kids.

If a youngster failed to account for every shortcoming, this all-knowing being would remind the frightened child of his or her misdeeds with more than a few specific details. Our speaker went on to tell us about a time a teenage boy in his family had acted disrespectfully to this nighttime caller. In a flash, the dark Santa threw the miscreant into a burlap bag and toted him several miles away from home before turning the lad loose to find his way back home, a changed young man. 

                According to Mr. Weigel, this folk personality who originated in the early settlers’ original native land of Germany was a means of social control. Parents would inform a neighbor or distant relative willing to play the role of Belznickel about their children’s poor behavior throughout the year. During a visit, if the children failed to fess up, the dark Santa would remind them and perhaps make them hold out their hands for a switching.

                Several years after I first heard this tale, I discovered one of my younger colleagues at had survived annual visits from the Black Santa on Christmas Eve prior to the later arrival of Jolly Old St. Nick. My friend’s family also descended from German immigrants who had settled near Hutchinson. Like the pioneer children in Victoria that Mr. Weigel told stories about, this teacher along with her brothers and sister had to own up to their shortcomings under the watchful gaze of a Santa dressed in dark clothing as well as their watching parents.

                After hearing these stories, I realized Belznickel was alive and well into the 1960s and maybe 70s. Hearing my friend’s firsthand accounts left no doubt that these visits impressed upon youngsters the need to be good throughout the year in order to avoid getting to know the Black Santa too well.

                While I’m glad my grandma did not pass this practice on to her children or grandchildren, this old world custom intrigues me. Over time, I’ve found several Christmas decorations that depict Belznickel to display on a shelf or hang from our tree. When guests ask about the unusual Santa ornaments dangling among the evergreen branches, I get to share Mr. Weigel’s story and connect someone else with Kansas’s interesting past.

Memorial Day Memories—Learning Family Stories Around Headstones

Peonies blooming, flags flying from light posts, and alumni celebrations signal Memorial Day’s arrival. For some families it’s time to camp at the lake or picnic in the backyard. No matter what I do to celebrate this holiday, this last weekend in May is a reminder of trips to the family cemetery and lessons learned about long dead ancestors.

Just saying Memorial Day brings back memories of Grandma Lottie lugging her store of floral arrangements up from her basement. She’d lay them all over her back porch and examine them for wear and tear--no worn out arrangements for her deceased loved ones. Then she’d make certain each had appropriate metal clothes hangers clipped in two to anchor them into Southwest Kansas soil until it was time to retrieve them for another year.

After she’d inspected and repaired her wreathes and bouquets, she’d relegate them to boxes destined for particular cemeteries where deceased relatives rested. By the time she and grandpa finished, the trunk was full and the journey ready to begin.

I’d find my place in the backseat of their Mercury and we’d hit that asphalt ribbon guiding us toward Dodge, Jetmore, and Ford. I loved sitting behind them, listening to their reminiscences of people I never met. 

During these drives over green prairies, I learned about a family branch that immigrated to northwest Kansas in the early 1870s. Once there, several families homesteaded and formed the little community of Devizes, named after their hometown in Canada. One of these great greats was a Methodist Circuit rider who served rural residents living in dugouts along Beaver and Sappa Creeks. After the Cheyenne Breakout in 1878, he buried some settlers killed in that incident.

I always wondered if his tiny wife, daughter of a ship captain on the Great Lakes, saw the similarity between waves on huge bodies of water and the ripples of wind moving prairie grasses in rolling surges. I know she saw the grass because she hid her children in it when she heard Indians traveled near their homestead.

Another side of the family moved first from Kentucky to Indiana and then to Kansas as their families expanded and they needed more resources to support them. We have photos of their homestead, livery stable, general merchandise store, and boarding house in Ford, where they settled. By the time I came along, I realized I’d only see that family name engraved on headstones at the cemetery. We descended from the female side, and that great grandma’s name changed when she married into the Canadian branch I mentioned earlier.

At each gravesite, Grandma and Grandpa continued sharing tales of those who rested beneath our feet. Though I’d hardly met a single soul resting in those hallowed plots, I thought I knew them personally. I learned what they drove, whether it was wagon or a Model T. I learned who their children were and what they served at family dinners.

Through these annual narratives, I understood what it took to survive and thrive in a land that nature designed to suit nomads. Looking back, I’m sure these pilgrimages with my grandparents triggered my love for this prairie that brought me home to Kansas.

Forget the Time Machine--Time Travel via Old Newspapers

Time travel has been the focus of many a story over the years and recently was in the news with reports about American scientists investigating its possibility during WW II. Michael Crichton explored the concept in his novel Timeline, which required rearrangement of participants’ molecules. Both of these examples are too daring for me, but I’ve found a way to safely journey through time that’s safe for my students and me. All it requires is access to old newspapers, which are available at the local library.

My introduction to exploring the past via microfilm was my master’s project. I studied the history of Ellis schools and discovered the treasure trove of additional information available in those little canisters of film. I learned about the first library, fire department, and street bricking in Ellis. Spinning through those little reels introduced me to not only the first schools and teachers but also declamation societies and fancy dinners and dances. I discovered Teddy Roosevelt campaigned locally. Reports of murders and natural catastrophes as well as support for victims intrigued past readers just as they do today.

Once I found this resource, I had to share it with my students.  I created a research scavenger hunt tied to a personal interview or study of an individual’s diaries and letters so my kids could scour the past to help them better understand not only their lives but also their communities.

Depending on the year they studied, Ellis and Thunder Ridge pupils discovered dates their towns got electricity and indoor plumbing. They were surprised to learn that early phone numbers contained only two or three digits. Analyzing costs of living created culture shock. The idea you could buy four or five gallons of gas for a dollar was novel. Local groceries advertising rib-eye steaks for 53 cents a pound and a gallon of milk for less than 20 cents made them long for the past until they found out what the average annual salary was. Once they learned that people earned much less, they didn’t long so much for the good ol’ days.

In a day when fewer people traveled great distances to shop or seek entertainment, towns like ours offered movie theaters, skate rinks, and bowling alleys, as well as several grocery stores and hotels. Students were surprised to discover how many services were available locally just a few decades ago. In discussions generated by their research, they analyzed why rural communities can’t support as many businesses today. They also understand that modern transportation makes it easier to jaunt to a nearby city where they have more selection.

The interview component of their assignment personalized their research. These teens visited with elders to learn what life was like for them.  If their chosen individual had passed on, they could read diaries and letters to answer their questions. One student met her great-grandmother born in 1922 this way. As she poured through old documents, she found grade school autograph books and stories of dating pre-WW II style. During the war, her grandma recorded a night when her community pulled their black out curtains as a security measure.

Other students discovered marriage during Depression years often meant young couples honeymooned by visiting relatives and returned to share a home with parents. Pre-antibiotic and pre-vaccine eras meant death commonly visited families. They also discovered ways people pulled together to accomplish work and enjoy good times.

Reading their reflections completed following this assignment allowed me to see that old newspapers and diaries have a broad appeal. Several students commented they’d found a new love for history. Almost everyone acknowledged that they gained an appreciation for those who lived in our towns before we did.

Leavenworth Pikes Peak Express

The scenery along   Highways 9 and 36 challenges many people’s belief that Kansas is flat and treeless. Even in western Kansas, the road undulates over rolling hills and trees line meandering waterways that lead into either the Solomon or the Republican Rivers. This lovely grass covered country makes it easy to understand why native inhabitants fought so hard to continue hunting and living in its sheltered valleys.

Even today, it’s clear to anyone who’s traveled the stark dry and treeless Santa Fe Trail across southern Kansas into Colorado that this northern route has more trees and fresh water. That would explain why partners who successfully ran Majors, Waddell, and Russell freighting business between Leavenworth and Denver would organize  a stage line for travelers to the gold fields 1859 using this trail . They named their brainchild the Leavenworth and Pikes Peak Express and charged passengers $125 one-way for a quick one to two week journey to the Rockies (amazing how the definition of quick has changed with the advent of cars and airplanes).

The surveyed course had 26 stations that provided meals, lodging, new horses, and fresh drivers.  Unique in this business, the company allowed station operators’ families to join them at these remote outposts located near either the Solomon or Republican Rivers. Little documentation of actual sites exists, but George Root and Russell Hickman jointly published an article in the Kansas Quarterly in 1944 providing some record of these locales.

Station 12 was located  “In Smith county, probably a little south of the forks of Beaver creek, about seven miles southwest of present Smith Center.” One diarist recorded the following fact about this site, “At Station Twelve where we dined, the carcasses of seven buffaloes were half submerged in the creek. Yesterday a herd of three thousand crossed the stream, leaping down the steep banks. A few broke their necks by the fall; others were trampled to death by those pressing on from behind.”

Down the road was Station 13, near present day Kirwin.  Newspaperman Horace Greeley describes a tent lodging in a journal entry of his trip on the Express. “I write in the station-tent (having been driven from our wagon by the operation of greasing its wheels, which was found to interfere with the steadiness of my hastily-improvised table), with the buffalo visible on the ridges south and every way but north of us.”

It was a hard day’s journey to Station 14, which was located approximately “12 miles southeast of present Norton and about four miles north of the North Fork of the Solomon River.” There was no description of the building’s construction, but a diarist mentioned the lack of water and trees. One noted, “To-day we have been among prairie-dog towns, passing one more than a mile long. Some of their settlements are said to be twenty miles in length, containing a larger population than any metropolis on the globe. . . . This evening we supped on his flesh, and found it very palatable, resembling that of the squirrel.” Perhaps this abundance of tasty mammals led to the naming of Prairie Dog Creek.

Travelers today can see a replica of Station 15 near Highway 36, on the west edge of Norton, Kansas.  According to a Mr. Richardson traveling through in in 1859, “We spent the night at Station Fifteen, kept by an ex-Cincinnati lawyer, who with his wife, formerly an actress at the Bowery Theater, is now cooking meals and making beds for stage passengers on the great desert three hundred miles beyond civilization. Our road, following the valley of the Republican River, is here two thousand three hundred feet above sea-level. . . . Day's travel fifty-six miles.” 

According to Horace Greeley’s notes, this was the halfway point between Leavenworth and the goldfields. It took his stage a week to get to this point, and he expected to take another week to reach his destination. Nowadays, we could make this trip easily in nine hours. It’s hard to imagine thinking two weeks was a swift journey.

The Quarterly article details encounters with the Arapaho, Cheyenne, and Kiowa as well as stage coach wrecks and buffalo related traffic jams. While you’re making good time cruising smooth asphalt, remember those adventurous souls who traveled the Leavenworth Pikes Peak Express, hoping to hit pay dirt in the Rockies.

If Past Could Meet Present, There’d Be No Boring Travel

As a youngster riding down Highway 50, I never questioned how this asphalt ribbon connected me to the nations’ or Kansas’s past. The drive was boring with uninteresting scenery unless we passed through a storm with twisting clouds or timed sunrise or sunset just right.

When cruising Kansas roads, it’s easy to forget where we came from. No, I don’t question the ability to recall an address we just left. I mean we don’t consider that many thoroughfares we take for granted began centuries ago as Indian trails. These were adapted later to meet arriving settlers’ needs. What intrigues now me is learning a section of the Arkansas River near Highway 50 once functioned as an international border.

Historically, native people’s trails followed waterways. A major landmark, the Arkansas River guided wayfarers on their journeys. Not long after the Louisiana Purchase and the beginning of western expansion, this ancient track became an international trade route bustling with convoys of goods destined for distant businesses. Prior to and during the Mexican American War, it also served to move troops and supplies.

In recent times, government entities have graded and paved this passage, labeling it Highway 50 on current maps. What these documents don’t reveal is that where the road follows the river, travelers might imagine they are within a stone’s throw of another era, country, and culture with period appropriate sights and sounds. At one time, the Arkansas served the same purpose the Rio Grande River does now--a border separating nations.

In his book Dangerous Passage, William Chalfant chronicles this history. Ox trains heavily loaded with valuable merchandise traveled between Missouri and Santa Fe. Before and during the Mexican American War, U.S. military troops used this route. The author pointed out travelers expected no aid between Council Grove and Bent’s Fort when wagons broke down; beasts of burden went lame, died, or were stolen; or humans succumbed to cholera, dysentery, or other ailments. Auto clubs like AAA didn’t exist, so prairie navigators faced each crisis depending only on their own abilities to save themselves.

While mechanics, motels, cafes, and medical services punctuate the present route, landscape and weather conditions haven’t altered from those trail predecessors experienced. No matter the century, summer heat scorches native grasses and evaporates moisture. These are aesthetic concerns for modern wayfarers, but for early travelers, these elements were essential to survival. Even today, folks who cross in winter chance blizzards and icy conditions that can halt a journey. Before bridges existed, high water arrested traffic or drowned humans and livestock that risked crossing these torrents.

Another concern Chalfant describes include Kiowa, Cheyenne, and Comanche raids. These tribes considered this borderland home and fought American and Mexican encroachment on their historic hunting grounds. They frequently ambushed east and westbound caravans between Walnut Creek and the Pawnee Fork. Forts Dodge, Larned, and Zarah didn’t protect the trail until the 1860s, more than a decade after it ceased its role as an international border.

For many, a trip along Highway 50 where it parallels the Arkansas River is tedious. However, if modern travelers could hear or see the past, they’d hear groaning wagons, lowing oxen, and cursing bullwhackers. They’d view desiccated carcasses that succumbed to the elements as well as broken down wagons littering a rutted road. Eyes would scan horizons for a glint of sunshine reflecting off a lance. Without the radio’s advance warning, they’d monitor distant clouds for changing weather. Always, they’d look for good water and camping spots to refresh themselves and their beasts.

If only one could experience what was and is simultaneously, there’d be nothing dull about a trip down Highway 50 where it follows the old border between Mexico and U.S. Territory.

Stitching Lives Together at Cottonwood Ranch

Old houses intrigue me—especially those with formal parlors. In today’s world, the concept of an appointed sitting room is alien to our interactions. However, after participating in the Donna Day Craft Workshop at Cottonwood Ranch Historical Site, I’m rethinking my feelings about fancy salons folks used only for weddings, Sunday visitors, or wakes.

During a past visit to the ranch where curator Don Rowlison explained this room’s purpose, several attendees recollected personal stories about family parlors and gatherings held within them. Storytellers told of long ago nuptials, holidays, and, of course, grief because this space reminded them of the place where a beloved grandma or grandpa was viewed prior to burial.

Some of the younger guests said that last thought creeped them out and hastily migrated from the area. For an instant, I shared their reaction but then considered how familiar this room would have been to sorrowing loved ones compared to the emotional sterility of modern funeral homes. That thought made me appreciate the cozy parlor where I stood even more.

Memories of happier times in such a location would override aching loss. A new widow would remember standing beside her groom amongst smiling relatives and friends in that very room. Reminiscences of joy-filled Christmases and childhood games secretly played in that space might interrupt melancholy moments. If walls could talk, the stories would invoke laughter as well as tears.

At many historical sites, curators steer visitors away from artifacts and structures rather than toward them. The philosophy at Cottonwood Ranch seems to be to allow guests to experience the facilities by using an object or location without damaging it. Obviously, fragile items are only for viewing and not for use, but the parlor and main living area function for their intended purposes—as gathering places for human beings.

During the recent craft day, women learning to hook rugs and crochet filled the front parlor where instructors had prepared tables with supplies. As participants found their places and situated jackets and purses, the room pulsated with estrogen. Had it contained this many females all at once since Fenton Pratt had lived there with his wife and daughters? It took some shuffling to get everyone situated with enough space to weave crochet hooks through yarn and tug wool strips through monk-cloth backing. 

After each participant adjusted to the close quarters, a buzz began. If stone and wood are capable of recollection, they recognized sounds of feminine voices talking non-stop. While few of these women knew one another personally, they came from the same region and shared common friends, relatives, experiences, and interests. Room topics skittered from too many deer on the roads, to wolves migrating into Kansas, to soloists at state athletic events, to how weather patterns have changed over the decade, to drought gardening, to using local plants to make dyes. Along with these topics, snippets of conversation relayed personal stories about children, siblings, parents, spouses, and exes.

The original house is over 120 years old, but I bet the walls would tell us that conversational themes haven’t changed much over decades. If the wandering spirit of a long dead woman had found her way to join the crafters in the parlor that Saturday, modern clothing and hair would have surprised her. However, she would have completely understood the ladies’ heartfelt concerns. She’d recognize female fellowship and recall why she liked attending sewing and quilting bees--women got the necessary done while stitching their lives to those like them.

Thank goodness The Friends of the Cottonwood Ranch create opportunities for visitors to link their lives to this place and to lives of others who also value this site. While the parlor no longer hosts weddings and wakes, it still brings people together.

Ellis Rivaled Dodge City as a Cow Town

After this year’s drought, it’s hard to imagine pastures around Ellis supporting  tens of thousands of Texas longhorns.  However, for a span of time in the 1870s, Ellis and her Kansas Pacific stockyards rivaled Dodge City as the destination for Texas drovers.  Grasslands between the Smoky Hill and Saline Rivers fattened herds while cowboys plumped local merchants’ accounts.

Before the establishment of the Western Cattle Trail in 1874, the L.B. Harris New Trail to Ellis, a subsidiary trail from Texas to Kansas, was identified on A.W. Ziegalasch’s Chisolm Trail map.  According to Margaret and Gary Kraisinger’s The Western/The Greatest Texas Cattle Trail 1874 -1886, Harris’s new trail had three spurs: Hays City, Ellis, and Trego Tank.  Captain Lytle soon founded The Western Trail, which followed a similar route to Ellis prior to railheads at Buffalo Park and other western towns.

 Ellis was desirable due to the Kansas Pacific’s excellent stock pens located north of the railroad in the vicinity of the current ball diamonds and fair grounds on the west side of Big Creek.  According to Ellis County Star articles, the Kansas Pacific offered competitive shipping rates.  Old photos confirm trails leading into and out of this area, possibly from traveling herds.

According to the May 29, 1876 Ellis County Star article, thousands of Texas cattle began arriving in the Ellis vicinity.  The Hickey herd numbered 1,500, joined by the 1,000 strong Taylor herd. These longhorns pastured south of town for several weeks before shipping out.  Halstein and Murry delivered over 4,000 head to summer on the Saline a few days after the first throngs arrived.

Livestock business boomed that May as another 20,000 longhorns in 10 different herds arrived within a few weeks.  In June, Captain King’s South Texas drovers delivered two herds totaling over 4,000 head to Ellis. The Hays paper reported over 100,000 head of Texas cattle delivered  to the Ellis railhead that summer and suggested Ellis stockyards and transport fees were better than Dodge City’s.

By July, The Star described a thriving cattle business in Ellis.  New businesses had opened and existing ones were doing well.  An August 3 article states, “Our cow-boys are still with us, and a better or more civil set of men, we have never met.” In September, the boom continued with additional cattle shipments.

All good things end, which was true of Ellis’s days as a business rival to Dodge City.  The legislature moved the deadline—a designated quarantine line for Texas herds—west of Ellis, making 1877 Ellis’s last year as a shipping point for Texas cattle. 

Local articles from those years are missing.  To find historical accounts requires visiting Hays Public Library or Kansas Historical Society Archives to read old newspapers. Few photographs of this time exist, and they reveal little of Ellis’s role in the cattle business.  Perhaps an undiscovered photo trove exists that will expand information about this part of Ellis’s history.

Those of us with active imaginations walk down 9^th Street, once Edwards Street and the main business district, to listen for ghostly boot steps and clinking spurs.

Witness Tree

        

           This summer we traveled to Montana where I met a remarkable man who introduced me to the concept of the “Witness” tree.  In that particular case, the storyteller was talking about 1000 or 2000 year old pine trees marking passing pack trains led first by Indians and later by miners and then hunters heading into the Bob Marshall Wilderness.

            On his property, he had several old witness trees, one that towered seemingly to the heavens where its branches danced to breezes I could not feel at ground level.  He was right.  If I looked carefully, I could see the marks and scrapes of passing panniers.  Indians had used the trail passing through his property for centuries, and then he himself had led hunters on their quests for big game in the mountains that rose behind his cabin.

         Those witness trees told a story if anyone cared to read the inscriptions in the ancient bark. As soon as I learned about “Witness Trees,” I began to think of a tree I discovered in western Kansas, a towering, old cottonwood with a trunk over 21 feet around. Though that cottonwood cannot be anywhere nearly as old as Ed’s “Witness” trees, it has stories to tell if I listen.

            A jagged lightning strike scar runs down the tree from the top to bottom, a result of mighty thunder boomers that occur occasionally on open prairie.  I have stood at the window watching flashes of lightning followed instantaneously by thunder. 

            A number of scars indicate other injuries to this old tree.  Critters took advantage and made homes in crevices and cracks, adding their stories to the tree’s.  Years ago, I took my mom to see this tree.  Somehow she didn’t duck when she should have or ducked when she shouldn’t have, and she left behind enough scalp to warrant six stitches.  On later visits to the tree, I find her salt and pepper hair snagged in the branch that wounded her.

            I have wondered what other stories this tree could tell.  It must have shaded Indian women and children from the sun.  An old friend used to find their stone tools in a nearby field.  Buffalo wandering about the prairie, looking to wear away their winter coats, must have rubbed against the corky, fire resistant bark. I suspect soldiers guarding the railroad found time for a nap under its branches.  How it survived the years of drought during the 30’s, 50’s and now, I don’t know. 

            Not too far away, a whole grove of trees, once a favored picnic spot of the old timers, stands.  None of them comes close to the size of this western Kansas “Witness” tree, so I know it is old. 

            Recently, because this tree triggered my curiosity, I wanted to find out more about cottonwoods. What I learned surprised me.

            Early travelers were glad to spot either a lone tree or a stand of trees, which provided shade from the harsh prairie sun.  In addition, they found firewood to burn instead of buffalo chips they typically used for prairie cooking.  Most importantly, cottonwood trees can’t grow without a steady source of water.  Spotting a cottonwood tree meant finding water. 

            Before white travelers crossed what was then known as “The Great American Desert,” traveling Indians found shelter under these trees along Kansas streams and seeps.  In dire circumstances such as deep snow or extended drought, the bark and leaves served as livestock forage.  According to Elliot West in The Way West, increased human traffic along the Platte and the Arkansas spelled disaster for most of the early groves

            After my research, I find cottonwoods more remarkable than I first thought.  Simply becoming a tree should qualify them as a “Witness” tree.  The most obvious fact that I should have pieced together is the way they propagate.  Every spring, the male trees unleash a barrage of nearly invisible pollen carried by the wind to the flowers of the female tree.  Once pollinated, the flowers mature into necklaces of dangling fruits that we see each spring hanging from the female trees. 

After a period of incubation or some such thing (more like a kernel of popcorn resting on a hot skillet), the fruits explode, unleashing a barrage of feathery white seeds that clog filters, coat cars and houses, and hopefully send at least one seed into ideal sprouting conditions. Each female tree has hundreds of fruits filled with thousands of seeds, which explains why one Montana Forest Service employee called this the “shotgun approach” to reproduction.

            These seeds have no food reserves, so they must immediately find a sunny spot in moist, loose soil if there is any hope for them to become trees.  Once it manages to find a site along a stream or seep, the root takes hold and a tree begins to grow. 

            Hard times aren’t over yet for these guys.  Cottonwood trees have a high sugar content, which makes them desirable as critter candy to munchers, grazers, and browsers.  If the seedling somehow avoids a snacking deer, elk, cow, or rodent, it faces the dangers of winter ice and periodic drought.

            The fact that the huge tree we discovered still lives amazes me.  Learning about these trees helps me understand why native people such as the Lakota, Hopi, and Navajo consider the cottonwood sacred.  The Lakota use a cottonwood as the center pole in their Sundance Ceremony.  Hopis make their Kachinas from cottonwood roots that have washed loose. 

No wonder I feel a sense of the sacred when I rest under these Kansas “Witness” trees.