Before summer ends, I want to share more images and stories of our Kansas trip in June. On the way to Garden City for the Linville reunion, we found ourselves retracing part of the Santa Fe Trail, and in this post I'll show and tell about some of the places we visited. At right is the flag in the center of the parade ground at Fort Larned, which is between Great Bend and Garden City. The fort was built around 1860 to safeguard traffic on the Santa Fe trail and give settlers and travelers some sense of security. It was said that travelers could see the flag on this pole miles away from the fort. We saw it too, from about 2 miles west on our way back east after the reunion.
We dropped in to the fort on a hot afternoon and quickly learned we would need more than an hour to see it all. There is a complete museum and gift shop and many of the buildings have been restored to their original state. This barracks held a regiment of enlisted men. They slept 4 to a bunk; two up, head to toe, and two down. Their uniforms, rifles and other gear hung in pegs on the walls. Furnishings were spare.
Fort Larned also had a well developed medical infirmary wing, with separate quarters for the doctor and corpsmen. The hospital beds were much roomier than the bunks. Each of the beds has a tag with the name of a soldier who was admitted, the date and the diagnosis. One of them suffered from "recurrent fever."
One of the buildings on the quadrangle housed a school that was attended by officers' children during the day and the soldiers at night. On the blackboard we saw this handwritten 8th grade final exam. It covered literature, geography, history, government, spelling, grammar, composition, arithmetic and algebra in 10 not-so-easy questions. If you click on the photo it will enlarge enough for you to read the questions. My favorite is No. 5: Tell what you can about the history of Kansas!
On this afternoon the post was serene. We looked in vain for evidence of where horses might have been kept. In addition to the barracks and the hospital shown here, there was a bakery, a blacksmith shop, laundry, a block house, quarters for officers and families, and various other functions. Somewhere on the wind we could imagine the clop of horse's hooves, the creak of wagon wheels, the sound of a bugle calling the troop to assemble.
Of course, we left Ft. Larned and arrived at Don and Kay's house on Thursday night to begin the reunion. Most of our activities there, including the electrical generating plant tour and the buffalo wagon tour, are covered in earlier posts. But we did all attend worship together at the Garden City Church of the Nazarene and I had to share a photo of this striking and beautiful stained glass window at the entrance to their sanctuary.
We also visited the Garden City zoo, a place dear to Kay and Don, who are strong supporters of it. This red panda was trying to take a nap in his tree as we rushed through near closing time on that Sunday. The zoo has unusual collections and is truly an oasis on the plains (not to mention on the Santa Fe trail.)
We were sorry to see our time in Garden City will all of the Linville sibs and inlaws come to an end, but we had more sights to see on the way back east. One stop was in Great Bend, where the historical society has placed 7 different Kansas themed quilt blocks in the sidewalks surrounding the historic courthouse square. This is the first one. I have pictures of all of them if anyone would like to see them!
We hoped to visit sites in Chase County that had intrigued us on our way west, but we were there on the wrong day for the Tallgrass Prairie and the historic Kaw Mission in Council Grove. We will be back some day. We did drive through the Tallgrass Prairie from Strong City to Council Grove and back to Emporia for the night. The cabin at above right was built by missionaries for Indians to learn how to adopt the white man's ways. A plaque on the grounds at Council Grove explained that the Indians disdained living in the cabins but kept their livestock inside.
We walked around the historic mission as the sun slanted low in the west. This is where the historic tour of Council Grove begins and we definitely hope to visit this segment of the Santa Fe trail on another trip, another year.
Since we were spending the night at Emporia, home of William Allen White, founder of the Emporia Gazette and an important figure in American journalism, I thought I'd like to visit his home, which is preserved as a museum. Not open on Tuesdays! From the outside, it is a fascinating structure. White was an early advocate of racial equality, and the town of Emporia was distinguished by its welcome of freed African Americans to settle after the Civil War. The quality of Emporia that impressed us most was the health of its Main Street and downtown business district. It was bustling, with shops and stores open and doing a brisk business. We drove downtown in search of a pair of replacement clip on sunglasses for Norm and found just what we needed at an old-fashioned drug store on the main street. Cash sales only!Next installment: Prairie flora and fauna.
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