Likeable Kansas
Editor Herb Sparrow finds many things to like in Kansas, from tallgrass prairies to marbles.

Wichita’s signature Keeper of the Plains, one of many outdoor sculptures throughout the city, looks out over the Arkansas River and the modernistic Exploration Place.

I found the quote from the diary of an 1880s pioneer woman at the Kansas History Museum in Topeka. I had to agree with her. During a recent trip through eastern Kansas, I found many things to like.

I was entertained by singing cowboys who have appeared in Carnegie Hall and can-can dancers in an 1870s saloon, stood on some of the last tallgrass prairie in the United States and held a 1,500-year-old Roman toga clip at one of the most unusual museums I have visited.

And I found many interesting people, including Phyllis Bass, who fervently preserves and tells the area’s African American history, and energetic 83-year-old Larry Tate, “the oldest and shortest male stripper in Kansas,” who is helping restore a historic carousel.

Wichita’s Old Cowtown realistically re-creates the town when it was a major cattle railhead in the 1800s.

After my first stop at the National Tallgrass Prairie Preserve (see sidebar), I had lunch at the Grand Central Hotel in nearby Cottonwood Falls.

The hotel is located along the broad, brick-paved main street that leads to the massive and historic county courthouse. Built in 1884, the building “always has been a hotel,” said owner Suzan Barnes.

The hotel was sold at the courthouse steps for back taxes after it had sat empty from 1980 to 1991. It was reopened in 1995 and is now the only AAA four-diamond hotel in Kansas.

Although, with only 10 individually decorated rooms, the hotel is not practical for large groups, its restaurant, named Best Beef Restaurant in Kansas in 2001 by the Kansas Beef Council, is.

Beef played an important part in the early history of Kansas as cattle were driven north from Texas to railheads in the state. Old Cowtown provides a realistic look at Wichita from the mid-1860s to 1880 when it was a thriving cattle town.

Located on 17 acres near downtown, the living-history museum features more than 40 buildings, 12,000 artifacts and several costumed interpreters.

“One-third to one-half of the buildings are from the era,” said Anthony Horsch, director of interpretation and education, as we walked along the town’s board sidewalks and dirt streets.

Although you might encounter a gunfight down by the railroad station, as I did, Horsch said the museum does more than just relive Wichita’s cowboy past.

“It’s cowboys, but so much more than that also. We portray three economic developments and lifestyles — the hunter/trader, the townscape when it became a railhead and the DeVore Farm when agriculture took over and got rid of the cowboy.

“We try to be as interactive as we can,” he said.

You can feel animals’ skins at the hunter camp, drive square nails in the carpenter shop, play with toys in the parlor of a Victorian house, drink sarsaparilla while watching the dancers at Fritz Snitzler’s Saloon or follow a plow or stir a batch of lye soap at the five-acre 1880 farm.

“This area was still stigmatized as the great American desert,” said Horsch. “Farming was very experimental. The buzzword of the time period was experiment.”

That experimental attitude has persisted over the years.

You can direct wind currents against a 40-foot-high shimmering wall at Exploration Place.

“Wichita is known as an entrepreneurial city,” said Jan Hiebert of the Wichita Convention and Visitors Bureau. “A lot of businesses started here.”

They range from Cessna aircraft to White Castle hamburgers. We were on our way 15 miles east of Wichita to see another example of that entrepreneurial spirit — the Prairie Rose Chuckwagon Supper.

Five years ago, Thomas and Cheryl Etheredge were struggling to hold on to their 120-year-old cattle ranch, which had been in Cheryl’s family for five generations.

“We wanted to stay on the land, so we had to think outside the box,” said Thomas Etheredge.

“There was nothing but tallgrass here four and a half years ago,” he said, looking around the parking lot at the 80-acre complex that now includes three performance stages, two movie theaters, four stores, an RV park, horse-drawn wagon rides, a small-train ride, a recording studio and a museum with “the world’s largest collection of Hopalong Cassidy memorabilia.”

“When we started, we had 20 people. Now we have 400 a night seven nights a week. We are the fastest growing attraction in the state,” he said.

The centerpiece is the nightly all-you-can-eat barbecue meal followed by Western music and comedy by the Prairie Rose Wranglers, who were preparing to head off for their second appearance at New York’s Carnegie Hall the week after I was there in June.

The new Hopalong Cassidy Cowboy Museum has an amazing collection of items endorsed by actor William Boyd, who played the black-clad cowboy in 66 movies and a 1950s television series.

“He was unbelievably popular,” said Etheredge.

Marketing genius
Boyd was also a merchandising genius and had his character’s image on more than 2,500 products. “There are more things that contain his name than even the Beatles or Star Wars,” said Etheredge.

You might think all of them are in the museum, which also has displays on the Chisholm Trail, which went nearby, and other cowboy memorabilia.

A corner of the museum resembles a house with a boy’s bedroom, a living room at Christmas and a kitchen, all filled with Hoppy items, from blankets and lamps to toys and even Hoppy milk.

While waiting for the meal and show, you can watch old Hopalong Cassidy films in one theater and Roy Rogers movies in the other.

Another innovative Wichita attraction is Exploration Place, part of the town’s Museums on the River complex that also includes the Wichita Art Museum, Botanica gardens and the Indian Center Museum.

The four-year-old modernistic structure is on the banks of the Arkansas River — here in Kansas it is pronounced ar-kansas — and a moat makes it appear to be sitting in the river.

“The architecture is unique in itself,” said Misty Duesing, sales assistant for the museum. “It’s an experience just to come to the building itself.”

Exploration Place is more than a children’s museum. It is fun for all ages. There are numerous enjoyable and educational hands-on exhibits that explore Kansas, flight and the human body.

I touched a 20-foot-tall twirling tornado, made a paper airplane, helped solve a food-poisoning mystery and tried my hand at flying a simulated Wright Brothers flyer lying on my stomach and helping steer with my hips — man would have had to wait a little longer to fly if I had been at the controls in 1903.

One of the most fascinating exhibits is a miniature Kansas train layout, with replicas of actual buildings from around the state during the 1950s. The large layout regularly runs through a 24-hour cycle and many of the small figures move — children swinging in a schoolyard, a man shoveling in a quarry, a combine in a wheat field.
One of the more unusual museums I have visited awaited me in Wichita’s Old Town, a complex of restaurants, shops and nightclubs located in restored warehouses.

“Talk about eclectic, this museum is,” Hiebert said as we entered the Museum of World Treasures. “It is one of those hidden jewels people don’t know about unless they stumble upon them.”

It’s hard to summarize exactly what is in the museum, which grew from the collection of a local doctor. It might be easier to say what’s not in it.

After guide Paul Rosales let me handle the toga clips, a woman’s ring and some coins from the Roman era, we headed off through the three-story structure to see Greek and Roman artifacts, Mayan gold, marble Buddhas from Thailand, ancient

Dinosaurs are among the many eclectic items in the Museum of World Treasures.

Chinese coins, a 3,300-year-old Egyptian mummy, suits of armor, European castle windows, dinosaurs, Civil War uniforms and weapons and Wild West memorabilia, including the scalp of Gen. George Armstrong Custer’s nephew, who was killed with him at Little Bighorn.

Whew. And that was only scratching the surface. There are documents signed by every U.S. president; original handwritten scores from famous composers, including Beethoven, Mozart, Wagner and Verdi; and an oil painting by Dwight Eisenhower.

“It actually hung in the White House during his eight years in office,” said Rosales.

The newest attraction in Wichita is the Gorilla Forest at the Sedgwick County Zoo, which opened in late July. The exhibit’s first four male gorillas have a 32,000-square-foot area to romp in.

You enter the exhibit through a replica of an African village and you can also take a boat ride through the area, which also includes African flamingos and rare okapi.

“They were the last major antelope discovered in Africa,” said zoo director Mark Reed. “Only 30 zoos have them. They look and feel like velvet.”

The 32-year-old Sedgwick County Zoo is a delightful surprise. At 247 acres, Reed said it is the fifth largest zoo in the United States and in the number of animals — 2,500 animals in nearly 500 species — it ranks 16th.

It had the first underwater viewing of hippos in the country and has one of the largest walk-through aviaries.

“We are considered one of the top 30 zoos in the country by our colleagues,” said Reed, who is the past president of the American Zoo and Aquarium Association.

The focus was on people when I stopped by the Kansas History Museum in Topeka

“One of our main emphases is how people lived,” said museum director Bob Keckeisen as he took me through the main gallery that covers Kansas history from the mid-1820s to the mid-1980s.

“Essentially before 1854, the only people legally here were Indians, agents and missionaries,” he said.

As you proceed through the years, you see a full-size Cheyenne tipi, a Wichita grass lodge, an 1880 steam locomotive, a 1914 biplane and a replica sod house.

The state’s turbulent territorial period from 1854 to 1865 is told in two sections, with the story of settlement on one side and the Civil War on the other. “It was a real eventful time in the state’s history,” said Keckeisen.

Kansas was a bloody battleground between pro- and antislavery factions in the years leading up to the Civil War.

“It was a real complex period. A lot of people just wanted to settle and start a new life,” said Keckeisen.

I got another view of Topeka’s history at Historic Ward-Meade Park, the estate of one of Topeka’s earliest settlers. The six-acre site includes a reconstruction of the original log cabin, the 1870 mansion that replaced it, a one-room schoolhouse, a general store/gift shop, a newly restored Methodist church, old-fashioned doctor’s and dentist’s offices and a drug store with an operating soda fountain.

Landmark decision
More recent history is on tap at the Brown v. Board of Education National Historic Site and Museum, which was dedicated by President Bush May 17 on

Buffalo Soldiers dressed in historic Army uniforms tell groups about the statue at Fort Leavenworth that commemorates the famed black soldiers.

the 50th anniversary of the U.S. Supreme Court ruling that declared school segregation unconstitutional.

The museum is in the former Monroe School, a two-story brick and limestone structure that was one of the schools involved in the landmark decision.

“It has been said by several that this is one of the most significant decisions the Supreme Court has ever made,” said LaTonya Miller, public affairs specialist for the park.

An innovative multi-screen video presentation in the former gym looks at the issue of discrimination and sets the stage for the Supreme Court decision.

Former classrooms contain interactive exhibits that trace the Civil Rights Movement, the Supreme Court ruling and the continuing struggle for freedom around the world with photos, television footage and artifacts.

God’s work
I discovered another part of Kansas’ rich African American history at the Richard Allen Cultural Center and Museum in Leavenworth, where I encountered the enthusiastic and dedicated Bass, who operates the museum as a labor of love, with no pay.

“It’s the way God intended,” she said. “Ordinary people do God’s work. It is so important that African American history be told. It hasn’t been told as it should be. I want to make sure African American history be told accurately.

“I will never stop researching and talking about the accomplishments of African Americans. They have done so much for this country and not gotten credit.”

The museum has several exhibits and artifacts dealing with black Army units, especially the Douglas Battery, a Civil War unit stationed at nearby Fort Leavenworth, and the 9th and 10th Cavalry regiments, popularly known as Buffalo Soldiers.

It also has several personal artifacts donated by Secretary of State Colin Powell, who was stationed at Fort Leavenworth, and the valuable Everhard Collection of photographs of 19th-century African Americans.

The museum is owned by the Bethel A.M.E. church, located across the street, which was part of the Underground Railroad. A modern new brick addition has been seamlessly joined to a 19th-century house owned at various times by two Buffalo Soldiers.

A larger-than-life bronze statue at Fort Leavenworth of a 19th-century Buffalo Soldier astride his horse with a rifle in his hand honors the regiments. Groups can arrange for a former Buffalo Soldier to greet them at the site.

Groups can also tour the remainder of the fort, which is the town’s top attraction according to Connie Hachenberg, director of the Leavenworth Convention and Visitors Bureau.

“It is the oldest fort west of the Mississippi in continuous operation,” she said. “It has never closed.”

Established in 1827, the fort is the site of the Army’s General Staff College, attended by all majors. Thus, many prominent military figures have passed through Fort Leavenworth.

The new Brown v. Board of Education National Historic Site is in a Topeka school that was part of the historic case.

Dwight Eisenhower learned to play golf on that course while a student here,” said Annie Johnson, a local step-on guide, as we drove through the well-maintained post.

As we left the fort, we passed the massive federal maximum-security penitentiary. “This is a very historic building,” said Hachenberg. “The dome is patterned after the U.S. Capitol.”

Hachenberg does a creative job playing off the town’s notoriety as home to the prison, telling groups they “don’t have to be indicted to be invited” and giving them certificates and pins after their visit noting they “did time in Leavenworth.”

She also takes a Polaroid photo of group members behind bars in a simulated prison cell when they arrive at their hotel. She will even surprise groups, as she did me, with a lunchtime performance by a local barbershop quartet, the Possum Hollar Four, dressed in striped prison garb.

“Those little things make it fun,” she said.

Another thing that will be fun for groups when it opens later this year is the new Carousel Museum. Located in a large modern building near the riverfront, the museum will house three carousels — a restored 1913 C.W. Parker wooden carousel, a 1950 aluminum carousel and a historic primitive carousel dating to the 1850s.

Bits and pieces of the carousels are now on display at the First City Museum, where Tate showed me the handiwork of a group of volunteers, mostly war veterans, called the Over the Hill Gang, who have restored the Parker carousel.

“It was made right here in Leavenworth,” said the diminutive Tate, who helped strip paint from the horses. “It is the only Parker carousel with two Kansas jackrabbits, a chariot and a lover’s tub.”

The hand-carved carousel horses are not the only quality woodwork I encountered in Leavenworth, Kansas’ oldest town.

“The woodwork in this house is to die for,” said Mark Bureman, director of the Victorian Carroll Mansion, one of several impressive houses in Leavenworth.

The elaborately carved woodwork is seen throughout the house, with more than 100 individual carvings above the doors. The house also contains 48 stained-glass windows.

Knuckle down
Leavenworth is a short drive from the metropolitan Kansas City area, where the Moon Marble Company in Bonner Springs is a treat.

Owner Bruce Breslow started the company when he needed marbles for games he was creating.

“I always liked toys and games and I wanted to do something with the past,” said Breslow, “so I started making board games. I wanted all marbles from my childhood. My first order was 85,000.”

Although Breslow still orders tons of marbles each year, he also learned to make marbles and demonstrates the process for groups.

“It’s not the quickest way to make marbles,” he said as he slowly blended together small vari-colored glass rods from Italy in the flame of a small burner, a process that has been used since the Middle Ages.

Breslow gradually drew the melded rods into strings then into an egg-shaped mass before using half-circle molds to round it into a rainbow-colored ball.

Although the marbles he makes are for decoration, he has a wall filled with jars of playing marbles of every kind, from Bengal tigers and frosty cat eyes to dragons. His cramped store is also filled with games and other toys for sale that are interspersed with historic toys and games.

If you want to try your hand, Breslow has a room in the back with a large circle on the floor where he will teach you how to “knuckle down” and shoot. If your knees are suspect, he has another smaller circle on a table.

Energetic Larry Tate tells groups about the restoration of a wooden, hand-carved carousel that will be the centerpiece of a new Leavenworth museum. Courtesy Leavenworth CVB.

Also in Bonner Springs is the National Agricultural Center and Hall of Fame, a Congressionally chartered museum that tells the history of American agriculture.

After viewing an introductory video and perusing the Hall of Fame area, which includes the boyhood plow of President Harry S. Truman, I headed to the adjacent Museum of Farming, which is crammed with farm machinery and tools dating to the 1800s.

Then it was off to Farm Town, USA, which depicts an early 20th-century rural town, including a one-room school, a blacksmith shop, a general store, a poultry hatchery, a train depot with a working miniature train and a farm house, complete with chicken coop and shed.

The National Farmers’ Memorial is at the entrance to the museum’s main building. The solid-domed structure has a cutout with three large high-relief bronze panels honoring farmers of the past, present and future.

The museum is a short drive from the Kansas Speedway, which has sparked a boom of surrounding development over the past three years.

Fortuitous timing
“We are a totally different community,” said Bridgette Jobe, tourism manager for the Convention and Visitors Bureau of Kansas City, Kan. “What spurred the development was the speedway. You could say the stars were aligned.”

The massive speedway, the site of several automobile races, including a NASCAR event, has been a hit. There are motorcoach tours of the infield, with a group picture in victory lane, and if no one is using it, groups can go on the track.

“It has been very, very popular,” said Jobe.

Over the past two years, the nearby Village West area has seen the opening of a Cabela’s, the Russell Stover Travel Store, a minor-league baseball stadium and a huge Nebraska Furniture Mart, in addition to several restaurants and a Great Wolf Lodge.

The ongoing commemoration of the 200th anniversary of the Lewis and Clark Expedition has resulted in a new park and riverfront development for Kansas City.

“They camped here on the point from June 26 to 29, 1805,” said Sarah Bohndorf as we looked out at the Kansas River flowing into the choppy waters of the Missouri.

Bohndorf, a local librarian, is on a commission that helped develop the Kaw Point Riverfront Park there. “The park came about because of the commemoration,” she said.

The park was dedicated during ceremonies this year on the anniversary of the expedition’s visit. The park includes a pavilion with interpretive signs about the expedition, a boardwalk on a bluff above the rivers, walking trails and a dock with improved river access.
 

Researching your trip

Kansas Division of Travel and Tourism (800) 2Kansas www.travelks.com

 

For more information contact:  
Leavenworth Convention & Visitors Bureau
Connie Hachenberg, Director
518 Shawnee, P.O. Box 44
Leavenworth, Kansas 66048
Phone: (913) 682-4113  FAX: (913) 682-8170 
E-mail your special requests

Revised: 07/20/06.