Liberal, Kansas

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.

Prairie roads and trains go together

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.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dalton_Gang

Doesn't look like a gang hangout

The original tunnel wasn't quite like this, it was
an eroded ditch covered by boards 

The layout of the house, the Barn and the connecting tunnel

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
 

Grat sounded like a troublemaker

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.

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.

Dorothy's House

Twinkles with Dorothy 

The Tin Man

The yellow brick road paved with donated bricks

https://www.roadsideamerica.com/story/2815


There is also a Coronado museum nearby with this statue in front of the visitors center.  In 1541 Don Francisco Vasquez de Coranado and 36 soldiers entered what is now southwest Kansas searching for the fabled "Seven Cities of Gold".  

He never found the seven cities

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Francisco_Vázquez_de_Coronado

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

Downtown Liberal, Kansas

The former Rock Island Railroad Depot

A retired Rock Island Railroad crane

Liberal City Hall mural

As far as I can determine this beautiful building is now the "Landmark Center"
condominium complex.  I suspect it originally was a fine Hotel.

Exterior details

Another view

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 

Dodge City, Kansas

October 15 - 17, 2017:

A cold start today of about 40 degrees, but the sun was bright a by the time we reached Dodge City it was in the 70’s.  The drive was on route 61 south to route 50 west all the way through mostly corn and soy bean farm country.  We passed through several small towns, I stopped at two, Belpre and Kinsley for a quick look.  They both seemed deserted, nothing open and no one on the streets on a Sunday morning, but we are in the bible belt here.  We are now in the vicinity of the Santa Fe Trail and there are roadside historical markers at intervals, I like to catch them when I can.  We pass through a huge array of wind turbines, hundreds of them practical surrounding the town of Spearville.

The skyscaper grain elevators at Belpre, Kansas

Knights of Pythias building in Kinsley, Kansas with great window paintings

Miles and miles of wind turbines at Spearville, Kansas

We have a full hookup campsite at the Blue RV Campground in Dodge City, the first in a while, but it’s kind of a dumpy campground.  It’s a strange place, the owner doesn’t seem to be around, you just fill out an envelop with your payment and put it in the drop box. 

I first do a cruise in the old downtown area with many sidewalk medallions mostly for Gunsmoke related characters and artistic iron signs on street poles.  It becomes apparent that a high percentage of residents are hispanic by the downtown stores.  There is a great Carnegie Library converted into art art gallery and a 1930’s era Post Office.  Most of the streets are brick and rough in places especially at intersections, I bottomed out the jeep fsuspension on one of them.  The Boot Hill area where the museum is located is adjacent to the downtown.  Boot Hill was the original frontier burial ground, where you might be buried with your boots on.  This only lasted for a brief period of time, but the legend will never die.  Extending a mile or so to the south west is the new business area with many chain stores, motels and restaurants.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dodge_City,_Kansas

Dodge City Welcome sign at the stockyard overlook

Dodge's famous Longhorn Steer called "El Capitan"

The Carnegie Library is now an art center

Doc Holliday sculpture

There are many of these metal signs around downtown
hanging from street light poles

Also many sidewalk medallions

Classic old sculpture in front of the Boot Hill Distillery

Corn is king here

The Santa Fe Train Depot with attached Harvey House
Hotel and Restaurant.  The Depot is still used for Amtrak service,
the rest is now the the Depot Theater Company and city offices

On Monday morning we go to the Boot Hill Museum expecting it to be a mostly tacky western “Gunsmoke” movie and wild west memorabilia museum.  We were pleasantly surprised to find a well done museum, great exhibits with real historic articles, good recreated buildings and several original buildings.  It really portrays an accurate picture of how Dodge City came to be, the good, the bad and the ugly (mostly ugly).  I wish I could say it has evolved into something beautiful, but it hasn’t.  Similar events occurred at many other towns during the period of western “Manifest Destiny” inspired settlement, but Dodge City being at the crossroads of the Santa Fe Trail, the Buffalo herds, the Indian country, the coming of the railroad and then the cattle drives intensified the action here.

   

The entrance to the Boot Hill Museum

ATSF Locomotive that has run about a million miles and
if it could talk would have some incredible stories to tell

All you ever hear about is Wyatt Earp and Bat Masterson
but Ham Bell was a marshall at Dodge City and other
areas in Kansas for 36 years

The remains of the Boot Hill cemetery is just fake wooden
crosses as the bodies were removed years ago, but this
is the actual spot

Love these old paintings of the indians hunting Buffalo

Once there were millions, then the railroad came, then the
hunters came, then the military strategy of killing the Buffalo
to kill the native Americans and within a decade they
almost became extinct

Next the cattlemen came

The taking of the west wasn't a pretty picture, but the TV
westerns did a great job of romanticizing it

Half of these buildings are fake but they really do have great exhibits inside

The interior of the Long Branch Bar is really well done
and that guy in the corner could really play the piano

The frontier women used a corset like this
achieve the shapely look

Bat Masterson's Letter to Colt firearms
was so well written and he knew exactly
what he wanted in his pistol

A photo of the Dodge City Cowboy Band

George Hoover a real hero of Dodge City who started
the first bank, served as mayor  four times in addition
to many other city, county and state positions.  He left
$100,000 to the city on his dealth.  He said "I made my
money here, I'm going to leave it here"

Toothless Nell's last words, I had a good mother

The "good old cattle barons" in a group photo

The Santa Fe Trail came right through Dodge City and it follows route 50 along the Arkansas River and the BSNF Railroad west across Kansas.  A few miles west of Dodge is a roadside marker at a site called the “Cache” where in 1823 a group had to dig holes to cache their trade goods for the winter, walk to Taos to get new pack animals and return to retrieve their goods in the spring.  A few miles further west is another roadside stop where a short path leads you to a place where they say you can still see Santa Fe trail wagon ruts.  We looked pretty hard, but couldn’t see anything definite, but I’m sure they are there.

That's Twinkles out there looking for the ruts

I bet those guys would be very surprised to know that
there is now a monument for what they did ?

We then continued to the town of Cimarron which was where you had a trail choice, to continue along the “Mountain route” along the Arkansas River and over Raton Pass with water or to take the “dry route” known as the “Cimarron Cutoff”.  The advantage of the Cimarron Cutoff was that it was a shorter route that saved about ten travel days but at a greater risk.  Most people took the shorter route.

http://newmexicohistory.org/places/cimarron-cutoff-of-the-santa-fe-trail
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Santa_Fe_Trail#Cimarron_Cutoff

The town of Cimarron doesn’t seem interested in promoting their history, we saw no historical signs in town, but it appears to be a well kept, quiet place to live.  The only store of interest was the "Clark Drug" store with a  beautiful soda fountain.

The clean sidewalk in front of Clark Drug

The beautiful soda and ice cream fountain inside

Back in Dodge, I take a ride across the railroad tracks to the enormous “National Beef” plant that spews out those nasty odors that sometimes blow to our RV park.  The adjacent area is mostly cattle yards, railroad and trucking yards and other nasty looking related operations.  Dodge City is home to EXCEL Corporation and National Beef, two of the largest beef processing plants in the country, possibly in the world.

Also across the railroad tracks and over the Arkansas River is a very depressed looking hispanic area.  The Arkansas River is bone dry presently, irrigation and the cities water demands have lowered the water table, but it still periodically floods after prolonged rainy spells, I saw photos of flood waters at the Boot Hill Museum.
To be fair, there are nice areas in Dodge City as the beautiful, well maintained city park, Wright Park, with a band shell, the "Hoover Pavilion" and a 9-11 war memorial.  Also on the outskirts of town is the fairly new huge United Arena and Boot Hill Casino and Resort.

The National Beef Plant 

Dodge City stockyards

Very nice band shell

The Hoover Pavilion

After much deliberation, our next stop will be Liberal, Kansas;

Twinkles and Slick