October 18, 2017:
We get out of Dodge and travel routes 283 and 54 to Liberal Kansas. As usual across Kansas, it’s mostly corn fields and enormous grain or corn storage elevators, but as we travel west we see more and more oil and gas wells mixed into the landscape. As usual a few photos from the road.
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Prairie roads and trains go together
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I saw this coming and pulled over for the photo. There is a
lot of wind power in Kansas |
At the town of Meade, Kansas I stop at the Dalton Gang Museum and look at the exhibits trying to evade two bus loads of 1st and 2nd graders on a school tour. The docent at the museum was freaking out a bit, he kept saying that he wasn’t told they were coming. The story of the Dalton clan is pretty interesting, the stuff of legends, there were 15 of them, 5 girls and 10 boys. Mrs Dalton was a sister of the Younger Brothers who were also outlaws. Of the 10 Dalton boys, 4 of them went bad and became known as the Dalton Gang. Three of them had been deputy marshals before going over to the other side. People said that they just had “bad blood”. The Dalton gang terrorized the area holding up banks and robbing trains and were quite successful for about two years until they attempted a double bank robbery in Cofffeville, Kansas. Someone there recognized them, put out the alarm mobilizing a number of armed shop owners and residents who opened fire on the Daltons as they exited the bank killing three of the brothers and wounding the forth. The museum in Meade is in the actual house of a Dalton sister who was held in high esteem by town folks, but appears to have allowed her bank robbing brothers to use the house as a hideout. This secret was uncovered years later when a 95 foot tunnel was found from the house to a barn behind the house to enable gang members to enter and exit unseen. The museum has many historic artifacts and does a good job of telling the story.
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Doesn't look like a gang hangout
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The original tunnel wasn't quite like this, it was
an eroded ditch covered by boards
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The layout of the house, the Barn and the connecting tunnel
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Crime did not pay for them, but somehow the wounded
brother who survived was eventually pardoned and went
on to start a successful real estate company
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Grat sounded like a troublemaker
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A beautiful poster depicting different saddle types and
other cowboy and rodeo events |
Approaching the Walmart in Liberal, Kansas we pass another huge National Beef processing plant like the one back in Dodge City. Once parked at Walmart, for a while all is fine, then the wind changes direction and this horrible odor is in the air, almost enough to make one turn vegetarian, it’s that disgusting. Also on the side of the Walmart there is a truck parking area where several foul smelling cattle stock trucks park overnight. I wouldn’t recommend staying at this particular Walmart for the smell, although otherwise it was fine.
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| This mural was on a building adjacent to the Walmart |
Also after arriving at Walmart, Twinkles tells me that after shutting the jeep off, it wouldn’t start again. This is after I did some preventive maintenance yesterday by cleaning the battery top and terminals. I find that the quick disconnect that I have between the battery cable and the post is not making a good electrical connection. After removing it and connecting the cable directly to the post all was good. As the Walmart auto center was right there, I had them test the battery just to be sure as we are going into the boonies from here and it tested OK. So much for this preventative maintenance stuff, as some people like to say, “If it ain’t broken don’t fix it”.
It seems that Liberal Kansas has designated itself as the Center of OZ and in fact they just had an OZ festival last weekend. We go to Dorothy's House and the Land of Oz to see what they have, it appeared closed so we just wandering around the outside grounds. We weren’t impressed, it appears pretty dated, in need of an upgrade.
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| Dorothy's House |
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| Twinkles with Dorothy |
Liberal, Kansa has an International Pancake Day and Hall of Fame. Since 1950 the women of Liberal and Olney, England have conducted a race with skillets filled with pancakes to promote peace and unity ? It has grown over the years to now include eating and flipping contests, a talent competition, a parade and a Miss Liberal Pageant. Of course Pancake day begins with an all you can eat breakfast. We just can’t quite understand how a “beefy” town with a large hispanic population in Kansas has become a world power in pancakes ?
https://www.roadsideamerica.com/story/29673
We then drove downtown where there are two exceptional restored buildings, the Landmark Center (now a condominium complex) and the restored Rock Island Train Depot. Otherwise, the downtown is mostly depressed looking with not much of interest.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liberal,_Kansas
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Exterior details
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Another view
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| The interior lobby |
You might wonder how Liberal got its name ? It has nothing to do with liberal or conservative politics, but instead has to do with an early settler who had dug a water well and allowed travelers to have water free of charge. The legend goes that the travelers often commented, “That’s mighty liberal of you” and when a name was needed for the town it became Liberal.
One night in Liberal is enough, it’s one place I can say I don’t care to see again.
Next stop is the Black Mesa State Park;
Twinkles and Slick
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