Thanksgiving 2021 Trip to Kansas

Beauty in spacious skies

We made the decision to visit mom and my family for Thanksgiving back in August! A twist in what we used to do which was to travel for Christmas. But we had stopped traveling to Kansas for Christmas after 2008. The trips were more random and not based on any typical expected family meetings. We probably should do Thanksgiving trips more often! It was great to see everyone and all in one house!  I know my Dad would have loved seeing it.

What was really great for my benefit in reconnecting: this was the second trip in one year back to Kansas! If roots mean anything to a person, going back to visit them every so often is essential for personal balance and harmony, I think. We've been a little sporadic in our visits there and the two trips in one calendar year really gave me the boost I needed.

Unlike in May where we seemed to take our time going out, which in hindsight might have been a mistake, we made great time and stopped in Columbia, MO at a Drury Inn.

We reached our vacation destination at an airbnb in Great Bend. Enough bedrooms for everyone coming in! We would be here for three nights.

Thanksgiving Day was the next day and we cooked up a lot of food! Too much food! It was great to have families visit: grandmother, aunts, uncle, cousin. It's too easy to grow separately and not see the connection.

On Friday, we drove a lot of miles but we saw a lot of things along the way!  Driving two cars, we made a convoy to see Mom/Grandma in her new assigned room at the home.  We spent some time talking and seeing her inside and outside of the place.  Her new room is so much better and has a great view of the school. Pixel enjoyed being with grandma and running around on the grass!

We then drove highway 183 all the way up to northern end of Rush County to stop at Pat's Beef Jerky in Liebenthal. If you haven't tried Pat's - it's worth stopping in or ordering online to have it shipped to ya. The name of the town came from Liebenthal, Russia where many of the settlers immigrated. Then we made it to the big city of Hays!  Well, big in comparison to anything around it for many miles. We saw the buffalo again. The babies we saw in May were getting so big!

 We then made the round trip from Plainville to Webster Lake via Webster Lake County Road out of Zurich, then to the family cemetery, the always heart-crushing stop at where the farmhouse once stood, then to Stockton and back south again to Great Bend.  

G had the awesome idea to have a Christmas tree with ornaments next to Dad's grave. This picture was one of my most liked on Instagram during 2021.

The three D's left flowers on everyone's grave site, even great-grandpa who is buried on the other end of the cemetery. 

The Thanksgiving trip ended too soon the next morning on Saturday. We each drove our three cars in separate directions. But each one of us had to take highway 156 out of Great Bend to I-70. I reflected that each of us now have our lives but we are still greatly connected not only as immediate family but with those family members who supported G and I growing up. One car headed north from Salina on 81, one car headed northwest out of Topeka on 4, and G and I headed east I-70 and south on I-55.

The two carloads heading north made it back in one day. We had the longer drive and broke it up into two days. I decided I did not want to go through all of the Illinois construction on I-64, I-57, and I-24. It was just too much for the expected holiday weekend traffic on Sunday. And the next day, I was right! Just a good guess!  

We stopped at the Drury Plaza hotel in Cape Girardeau, MO. Unlike the one in Columbia, we checked in on time for the free hor-doeurves!  And free breakfast the next morning. I was thinking of driving to Dyersburg to catch I-40, 840, I-24 but as we approached the I-55/I-57 exchange the traffic delay was getting larger and larger for that route.  I finally decided at almost the last minute to have G turn east onto I-57 to cross over on two-lane highways to Paducah and I-24.

What a route! We took highway 62 which is basically just an elevated roadbed through the Mississippi River floodplain. We were in the area where the Mississippi and Ohio rivers merge. It was interesting to see how barren of human life was through there. Then we crossed two bridges, one was familiar one was not and it was scary.  That bridge is called the Cairo Mississippi Bridge. It is so narrow and long that semis have lost side mirrors to opposing traffic. The bridge pops and clanks and all kinds of noise when driving over it. Here is a picture of it from commonwiki photos.

After crossing that bridge, we immediately crossed a bridge much more familiar to us, the Cairo Ohio River Bridge which landed us into Kentucky. From there we made it home in great time about 5 and half hours. Just enough time to unpack, eat, and get ready for work the next day!

May 2021 Road Trip to Kansas Part Four of Five Series

 Part 4 is Mt. Vernon - the Farm

Ash Creek valley and the road past the Hunter farm

Part 4 stays in Rooks County. It's not a very far drive from Nicodemus (Part 3) to Mt. Vernon Cemetery. As we drove up Highway 24 east from Nicodemus, we noticed how full Webster Lake was - it was really full of water after the May rain!

Mt. Vernon is where my great-grandparents, grandparents, uncles, aunt, other related family members, and my Dad were buried. 

Me standing next to Dad's grave marker

When we walked over to Dad's gravesite, we left a note, wept a few tears, told him I was back to visit. I noticed that the rock that David left for his grandpa 9-months earlier was still there.

Grandparents

Cemetery road from front gate

Great-grandfather buried on other side

The old family rumor was that my great-grandfather said he wanted to be buried by the family of his first wife and my great-grandmother, his second wife, didn't object. He is buried next to his first wife. My great-grandmother outlived her husband by 24 years -- there was some age difference between the two.

This marked my second visit back to Mt. Vernon after Dad's graveside service. When you are out there, you can hear the wind whistling through the fence wire and the blades of grass yielding to it. Losing a parent and coming back to visit is not easy. I was wondering about Dad -- he was the caretaker for this cemetery for many, many years. What did he think about when trimming around his parents and his brothers gravesites. One will never know now.  

Leaving from the cemetery, we took the very short drive to what was the Hunter farm. Fewer than four miles. My mom had told me about the Hunter home being leveled but nothing hit like seeing it a few years ago. My children saw the vacant site. The one person who had not was the driver - my wife. She knew it but nothing prepares one for the vast emptiness that was a home. It hit her hard driving up to the old driveway entrance.

Used to be a two-story house here with thick limestone walls.

So many generations of family grew up here -- it is like a part of the root is gone within your soul. My great-grandfather built buildings around the area from limestone. The house was originally a limestone house that was added onto many times.

Leaving the old farm site, we headed towards Stockton. Part five will pick up from there back to Tennessee.

May 2021 Road Trip to Kansas Part Three of Five Series

Rooks County, south of Palco

We left Great Bend on Sunday, May 23rd and drove in a big semi-circle for most of the day to finally end up for the night in Lawrence, Kansas, home of Kansas University. Parts 3 - 4 - 5 will detail that Sunday.

First up - Hays, Ellis, Nicodemus.

We took highway 96 out of Great Bend to reach highway 183. Highway 183 played a big part in my life: it was the highway through Stockton, through Hays, runs near a sister's house, and was the highway that led me to a new life between my 8th grade and Freshman year.

When we got to south of Hays, we took the alternate bypass around to head to Frontier Park. This road takes one pass the historic Fort Hays site but we weren't heading to see the fort; we were headed to see the buffalo! 

Baby calf on the ground

Calving season was upon us and we saw baby bison romping around their large pen. We thoroughly enjoyed the show they put on for us!

We decided to forego driving on 183 and instead took the bypass all the way around Hays to I-70. On I-70 we put the metal down and drove the short trip to the Ellis, KS exit. It was spitting rain on us but that was the only time we ran into rain for the whole day. 

I played against some team from Ellis during school. The home of Walter P Chrysler of Chrysler fame is in Ellis. We took the exit and drove on county blacktop for several miles, weaving through Ellis County and then into Rooks County. We crossed the Saline River into Rooks County and again in part five.  

Many of the homesteaders and settlers of Nicodemus took a train to Ellis and walked on foot towards Nicodemus. Probably pretty close to the road we were taking from Ellis to Nicodemus. I was able to ride through Palco, a little village I had not seen in a long time and probably won't for a long time if ever.

We took Highway 18 to Damar and saw the beautiful twin steeples of the Catholic Church in Damar from the highway. Then we took another county blacktop to Highway 24. By this time we were only a mile from Nicodemus. Nicodemus is very important to me - I have written about this National Historic Site many times. I'm just going to post a lot of pictures for the rest of this blog post. But I'm going to end my text by saying -- I love Nicodemus!

The NPS ranger said I heard correctly: the old dugout was used by Nicodemus settlers after 5:00. 😢

Nicodemus Historical Marker

Fort Hays Historical Marker

Nicodemus Archive Files at KU Library

Anyone who knows me knows that I have a very special affinity for Nicodemus, Kansas, now a part of the National Park Service.

For those who don’t know anything about Nicodemus,  Nicodemus represents the involvement of African Americans in America’s westward expansion. It is the oldest and only remaining Black settlement west of the Mississippi River.

The Kansas University Spencer Research Library has a large archive collection of files about Nicodemus. You can go online to see what is indexed, but to actually see the collection, one would have to go to the Spence Library.

Here is the official citation to the collection with link to the index: 
Nicodemus Historical Society Collection, Kansas Collection, RH MS 545, Kenneth Spencer Research Library, University of Kansas. http://hdl.handle.net/10407/4641638255

Here is the collection summary:
Title: Nicodemus Historical Society collections
Dates: 1880-2015
Quantity: 38 boxes + 5 oversize boxes, 6 oversize folders, 1 audio cassette

Here is the archive file’s description of Nicodemus:

History of Nicodemus, Kansas
    The town of Nicodemus in Graham County, western Kansas, was founded in 1877 by African Americans migrating primarily from Kentucky and Tennessee, before the time period of the Exodusters. The town reached its most prosperous years by 1886, with the maturation of area agricultural production. However, the community began a long decline when a rail line, built in 1888, bypassed Nicodemus, instead linking through the neighboring town of Bogue.

    The population is thought to have peaked in 1910, when the federal census reported 595 inhabitants in Graham County. By 1950, only 16 residents were counted, and the Post Office station closed in 1953.

    Nicodemus was designated a National Historic Landmark by the federal government in 1976, and became a National Historic Site operated by the National Park Service in 1996 in large part thanks to Angela Bates, a prominent citizen. The town is known for its long history, noteworthy citizens, and the Homecoming Emancipation celebration that takes place each July

I often thought about the statement by former US senator Bob Dole, who led the effort to make Nicodemus a National Historic Site in 1996. He stated in an interview about Nicodemus that there was a lot of racism aimed towards the residents of Nicodemus. I found this sad but there were at least two obvious transportation racist choices. One, the railroad was supposed to come across the Solomon into Nicodemus. The railroad workers set up a tent city that became Bogue. The railroad went through Bogue. The other obvious choice was putting in the original Highway 24.  It ran three miles to the north of Nicodemus and then veered straight south to meet the highway from Bogue, three miles west of Nicodemus. I mean they couldn’t have veered the highway straight south three (or even two) miles to the east? Of course they could have.

I’ll probably never get a chance to see this archived collection but I am glad it is available for future researchers to see and document the beginnings of Nicodemus.