buffalo roam where the
$4.99
winter 2014 | vol 70 | issue 4 | kansasmag.com
winter winter
“We don’t have skyscrapers or the seashore or mountains in the Sunflower State. But we have land and grass and uninterrupted sky. We have silence where we can listen and the land talks back.”
contents
-Bill Kurtis, Tallgrass Beef
features
22 | Flying Over Flyover Country Tom Averill on what it means to view his home state from above
28 | Ode to Kansas Sunups and Sundowns The unique beauty of sunrises and sunsets on the prairie inspires artists and non-artists alike
34 | Where the Buffalo Still Roam Photographic reflections
38 | Kansas’ Finest
The 2014 class of Kansas’ biggest fans and greatest attractions
42 | Ad Astra Per Aspera
winter 2014
Photograph Tanner grubbs
From an old timey B-29 to chili and cinnamon rolls, what inspires us as Kansans
on the cover Kansas buffalo
Photograph by Harland J. Schuster
01 Kansas!
Magazine winter 2014
departments
04 | Field Guide
courtland ad astra per aspera Smalltown Kansas
Agenda Reasons we love kansas
Interstate-70 Kansas’ finest
harvey county Kansas! Gallery
scott city Kansas’ finest
70 garden city where the buffalo still roam
topeka flying over flyover country
35
pittsburg Taste of kansas Southeast Kansas Chicken
135
Liberal In season U.S. 83
83
wichita ad astra per aspera Doc Takes Flight
06 | Editor’s Letter 09 | In Season
10 | Eat 13 | Shop 14| Don’t Miss 15 | Ride
16 | Reasons We Love Kansas 20 | Winter 2014 Events 48 | Tour Kansas:
coffeyville kansas outlaws Dalton Defenders Museum
Kansas Outlaws
The Sunflower State is known for its famous lawmen—but its infamous villains are legendary as well
53 | KANSAS! Gallery find us on facebook: facebook.com/kansasMagazine follow us on twitter: @kansasMag
02 Kansas!
Magazine winter 2014
59 | Taste of Kansas:
Southeast Kansas Chicken
Rival eateries Chicken Annie’s and Chicken Mary’s have sat side by side for decades—but please don’t make us choose
64 | Milestone of Kansas
Photograph courtesy of Kansas state Historical Society/kansasmemory.org
Atwood in season Mojo’s Espresso & Bistro
winter 2014
Kansas
bed & breakfast
association
fieldguide
www.kbba.com
gift certificates available
winter 2014
i
z
a
g
a
n
to the stars...
14
r 20
winte
t
h
e
m
eT
contributors
e
u
i
A
d
e D
A
S
T
R
A
I
S
S
U
E
and to magazine theme, season’s KANSAS! as! This print for is … Kans years in tell us what … well marks 70 ator) to edition celebrating more or illustr r 2014 we are s or be grapher The winte milestone experience Hills. writer, photo ate this Kansas h the Flint you (the to share commemor ded for y or sketc e you uraged ,” is inten l a bywa fair. Mayb are enco “Ad Astra e? ngs. Trave as. You the state d offeri ets anyon rush at about Kans e. Suns a sugar understate on to unique its get scen t or food to hold ical abou Sunflower growing want them philosoph Mount ing in the rs. We use of the claim at or indulg our reade also beca but itality with , Stake your it hosp sions share y excur Midwest want to love the ared worth love, we it is you de. of the dog-e Whatever can provi because , not only KANSAS! this issue e that only e escap y-pag gloss
g H E
mixing This season we put most of the planning in the hands of the writers and photographers. In April we released the edition’s official theme guide to contributors and began to see the pitches roll in! We had 53 pitches that were solely inspired by the phrase “Ad Astra.” We have no doubt you’ll enjoy this unique edition.
04 Kansas!
Magazine winter 2014
This winter, our team of includes: illustrator
thirteen writers
eleven photographers
And a tip of the hat to Kansas Historical Society!
Kansas’ finest
Do you know a tourism superhero who loves Kansas? We want to know! Send a brief note to ksmagazine@sunflowerpub.com. Tell us who they are, where they promote and what amazing messages they are spreading about the Sunflower State.
andrea
m
w e l c o m e
Welcome to the
Ad Astra Edition
Kansas Department of Wildlife, Parks and Tourism
“I am so thrilled to join the KANSAS! magazine family. Growing up I remember being captured by the stories featured in KANSAS!, and thinking my home state was a magical place filled with adventure—and I still do.” - Andrea Etzel The Kansas Department of Wildlife, Parks and Tourism is excited to announce Andrea LaRayne Etzel as the new editor of KANSAS! magazine. With a background in marketing, design and photography, she offers a new perspective on promoting the state of Kansas, on and off these glossy pages.
Richard Smalley interim editor
Sam Brownback
seasOns OF THe FOX
Prairie Oaks inn
Lindsborg, Kansas
Sylvia, KS
www.seasonsofthefox.com
www.prairieoaksinn.net
800-756-3596
620-486-2962
Jason Dailey photographer
aBilene’s ViCTOrian inn
COunTry Dreams BeD anD BreakFasT
Joanne Morgan
Abilene, KS
Marion, Ks
www.AbilenesVictorianinn.com
www.countrydreamsbedandbreakfast.com
governor
Robin Jennison
KDWPT Secretary
www.sunflowerpub.com lawrence, kansas
design & production
Katy Ibsen
managing editor
Shelly Bryant
Designer/art director
marketing, (785) 832-7264
Bert Hull
general manager
KANSAS! (ISSN 0022-8435) is published quarterly by the Kansas Department of Wildlife, Parks and Tourism 1020 S. Kansas Ave., Suite 200, Topeka, KS 66612; (785) 296-3479; TTY Hearing Impaired: (785) 296-3487. Periodical postage paid at Topeka, KS, and at additional mailing offices. Newsstand price $4.99 per issue; subscription price $18 per year; international subscription price $22 per year. All prices include all applicable sales tax. Please address subscription inquiries to: Toll-free: (800) 678-6424 KANSAS!, P.O. Box 146, Topeka, KS 66601-0146 e-mail: ksmagazine@sunflowerpub.com Website: www.KansasMag.com POSTMASTER: Send address change to: KANSAS! P.O. Box 146, Topeka, KS 66601-0146.
888-807-7774
800-570-0540
CirCle s ranCH anD COunTry inn
C&W ranCH BeD & BreakFasT
Lawrence, KS
Smolan, KS (Salina)
www.circlesranch.com 785-843-4124
www.cwranch.com 785-668-2352
ClOVer CliFF ranCH BeD anD BreakFasT
THe HisTOriC WOlF HOTel
Please mail all editorial inquiries to: KANSAS!, 1020 S. Kansas Ave., Suite 200, Topeka, KS 66612 e-mail: ksmagazine@sunflowerpub.com The articles and photographs that appear in KANSAS! magazine may not be broadcast, published or otherwise reproduced without the express written consent of Kansas Department of Wildlife, Parks and Tourism or the appropriate copyright owner. Unauthorized use is prohibited. Additional restrictions may apply.
Elmdale, KS
Ellinwood, KS
www.clovercliffranch.com
www.historicwolfhotel.com
620-343-0621
620-617-6915
05
Kansas!
Magazine winter 2014
info@kbba
•
888-572-2632
extras from the editor Adding to the bucket list
I especially enjoyed the section about the Kansas forts. We have been to all of them or the sites except for Fort Wallace way out there. It’s still on the “bucket list.” Peter Anderson Lawrence
b y w ay s
flint Hills
t Ffllinitn Hills Hills o n a l n a t i
i c s c e n
y b y w a
ss • The Tallgra l Prairie NaTioNa boasTs Preserve of 40 species 200 grasses, birds sPecies of and 30 species ls. of mamma
of
“Spiker,” Keysto ne Gallery’s Chevy Subur 1949 ban, tour to Monum on a driving ent Rocks. The world-renow ned has used this Bonner family vehicle for fossil huntin g in the Smoky Hill chalk since the early 1960s.
flint landscape known as the national in eastern Kansas timeless, the region consider its to many who priceless natural Hills is poetry qualities as mysterious for artists, magical and onal canvas an inspirati as well as assets. long musicians, writers and scattered photographers, population home for the love the land dearly who a communal ople t the area—pe flint Hills represen throughout rhythms—the on this Prairie tract and its ancient along remaining tallgrass the largest scenic Byway the national it. continent, and way to see of north is the perfect million acres Kansas 177 g across 170 developed or Once stretchin Prairie was of the tallgrass less than 4 America, much passed. today, much as the centuries Prairie remains, plowed over majestic tallgrass the rugged, pristine the of percent making the flint Hills, one of the world’s of it among swath of land ecosystems. rolling endangered the flint Hills’ Underneath shelves of are fractured thin countryside lens covered by behindthe limestone partially cted horizon the unobstru photo soil. favorite the hilltop past, before some of my photo Wetland Hills include suggests a recent th century, when g a single The Flints and Wildlife So choosin is nationable. the 20 Glacial of Kansas. l But there dawning of spots in all Hills scenic chest-high tall impossi scenic ByWay es | flint Hills ByWay prairie trail vegetation and is, well, nearly | GypsuM and it fascinat e. Hills scenic wildlife, nationa scenic opportunity scenic ByWay landscap every spring, ByWay | frontier edlthe Each ByWay dominat | route 66 Historic that happens grasses | native stonenational Military Historic go up in smoke. one ritual ByWay Hills scenic Prairie Flint | sMoky ByWay | post ByWay burn the the tallgrass time: The valley scenic rock scenic are natural landowners me every ByWay the flint Hills ByWay y| Western in early April), to clear vistas Historic Preserve and ment tool spring (usually curious passersb a manage ByWay beckon as native ed growth of magnets that tallgrass prairies already acquaint promote new is at debris and plays as well as those aph the burns old plant to photogr land. the area fire from best time ing with the fabled smoke and grasses. The smell the skies walks on meander will see and sets and the host to nature the famous dusk. You as the sun k rides and backdrop away. Then horsebac the miles trails, amazing recall that many become an prairie burns opportunity Flint Hills springtime and allure. darken, the d an amazing hills’ rich history prairie fires—an the beloved for blazing define photos. Hills , photographer Kansas’ flint unforgettable its value for some – Doug Stremel heritage and prairie’s ancient day, weekend on. spend a as a destinati splendor. up its quiet and soaking lor or week exploring d vistas. Watch a technico unspoile Admire the an endless sky. in the flint wheels? sunset under • oN Two ere—anywhere— on Earth KaNza standing somewh a more perfect place • chase couNTy The dirTy to imagine deer and the TaKes Hills, it’s hard courThouse roam and the 200 biKe race buffalo the h 1873. iN where, indeed, was builT cyclisTs Throug antelope play. fliNT hills.
icKs QUfact
The
kansass byway
org
ksbyways.
11
kansas
10 byways
org
ksbyways.
Surprised with Byways Just wanted to let you know I received my fall edition of the KANSAS! magazine. I was especially thrilled to receive the added bonus of Byways of Kansas. Also enjoyed the “Behind the Lens” of one of your photographers, Doug Stremel. His dad and my husband were avid hunters in the Cheyenne Bottoms Area many years ago. Keep up the good work, Doug, you’re doing a great job. Love the magazine and can hardly wait for the calendar. Karen Whitmer Osage City
send your thoughts to: Editor, KANSAS!, 1020 S. Kansas Ave., Suite 200, Topeka, KS 66612 or e-mail ksmagazine@sunflowerpub.com
06 Kansas!
Magazine winter 2014
Dear Readers, It is my pleasure to serve as editor of the Ad Astra edition of KANSAS! magazine. This season we explore the items and experiences that are truly unique to our state. While growing up in Marysville, I never gave it much thought, but one great treasure about our state is that we get to experience all four seasons. As a kid, I knew that once it started snowing, it was just a matter of time before the police would block off one of the city streets so the kids could go sledding. But if you are like me now, you’re wondering if you can get one more year out your favorite sweatshirt or find the gloves you thought you threw on the top shelf of the closet. In the meantime, how about warming up with a bowl of chili and a cinnamon roll? That’s a Kansas original explored in this issue. Of course, ‘tis the season we look at some distinctive holiday shopping spots around the state that are great for decorating ideas and those special gifts. Why do I keep thinking about food as I write this? Maybe it’s those mouthwatering images of fried chicken in the Taste of Kansas section, or the thought of a hot bowl of soup from Little Pleasures in Hillsboro. Also this season, we take a look at the Wild West, a time of legendary lawmen, but of outlaws and gangsters as well. We tour the pages of the past to learn more about these bad guys and why Kansas was part of their epic tales. And we take a pictorial look at the American bison, the magnificent animals that once ruled the plains. On the topic of legends, three years ago, KANSAS! magazine began honoring Kansas’ Finest: individuals across the state who have made a difference in promoting and improving their communities. We are honored to present those once again. So settle in, maybe watch the sunset (did I mention our feature on Kansas sunsets?) and enjoy this winter issue of KANSAS! magazine. Thank you for reading,
Richard Smalley
Tourism Marketing Manager
It’s All Here for YOU in Lawrence
With the spring 2015 edition, KANSAS! magazine welcomes its new editor, Andrea LaRayne Etzel.
Photograph Harland J. Schuster
I have been reading the fall 2014 issue over and over, and the accompanying piece about Byways of Kansas. This is in my mind the best KANSAS! ever, and I have been a subscriber for many years. TOTALLY AWESOME!
Arts & Culture • Shopping • Dining • History Museums • KU • Sports • Activities • Entertainment
Convention & Visitors Bureau
winter 2014
in season 10 eat / 13 shop / 14 don’t miss / 15 ride
winter 2014
Photograph Jason Dailey
Welcome to KANSAS! magazine’s “In Season.” Here we explore what’s new and buzzing throughout the state— from restaurants and shopping to cultural happenings and attractions. This season, we shop till we drop at Kansas’ eclectic gift shops.
09 Kansas!
Magazine winter 2014
eat
in season
The written by Kimberly Winter Stern
home on the
bed & breakfasT inn
natural range Easy Slow-Cooker
pot roast
Fun Kansas Food Events
Full Plate:
Take the chuck roast and season with salt and pepper to taste. Brown on all sides in a large skillet over high heat. Place in the slow cooker and add the soup mix, water, carrots, onion, potatoes and celery. Cover and cook on low setting for 8 to 10 hours. Serves 4 -Tallgrass Beef
Explore the tasty side of the Sunflower State with events seasoned in Kansas heritage and flavored with fun.
Bill Kurtis is a lucky guy. As a celebrated filmmaker and a wellknown conservationist who rallies to preserve treasures such as the National Park System, Bill Kurtis also has an abiding love affair with nature. The Independence native admits that you can take the boy out of Kansas—he’s lived in Chicago for much of his adult life— but you can’t take Kansas out of the boy. “We don’t have skyscrapers or the seashore or mountains in the Sunflower State,”he says.“But we have land and grass and uninterrupted sky. We have silence where we can listen and the land talks back.” Kurtis eventually traced his footsteps back to Kansas nine years ago after rediscovering his prairie roots. Kurtis embraced an unbridled passion for the Flint Hills and healthy, grass-fed beef, buying an 8,000-acre ranch west of Sedan and starting the Tallgrass Beef Company in 2005. (3,000 acres have since been sold.) Kurtis’ 500-plus head of cattle graze on the lush, sprawling Red Buffalo Ranch and produce
Antonino Fall Feast Hays-Historic Churches of Ellis County November 2 Enjoy an old-fashioned German meal in the heart of Kansas’ German Capital with homemade galuskies, roast beef and mashed potatoes, cakes, pies, rolls, cookies and more. germancapitalofkansas.com
welcome to the barn bed and breakfast inn
a sustainable, healthy product at the forefront of what he calls the grass-fed revolution. “I’m a prairie guy,” Kurtis says.“This region has the best grass in the world. Raising grassfed beef yields a healthier, tastier and more environmentally responsible product.” Tallgrass Beef Company produces beef high in omega-3 without hormones to enhance growth or antibiotics. Kurtis and his daughter, Mary Kristin—manager of Red Buffalo Ranch—are evangelists for the health benefits of beef raised on grass. Acclaimed Chicago chefs such as Rick Bayless, Sarah Stegner and the late Charlie Trotter hopped on the grass-fed bandwagon when Kurtis started peddling it to their restaurants’ backdoors. For Kurtis, this enterprise in the Kansas Flint Hills may be one of the most triumphant stories of his career. “It’s a privilege to use this land as people did centuries ago, and let cattle eat and live as nature intended,”he says. tallgrassbeef.com
7th Annual Ladies Holiday Brunch & Christmas Tea Eisenhower Presidential Library Courtyard, Abilene December 6 Enjoy a scrumptious brunch and celebrate the season with a concert featuring many delightful holiday favorites performed by local musicians. The Arts Council of Dickinson County hosts the event. Admission required, begins at 10 a.m. abilenekansas.org
Liverwurst & Fried Mush Dinner Yoder February 27 Fundraiser for Mennonite Friendship Communities featuring homemade liverwurst, mush, sausage and the trimmings as part of an authentic Mennonite meal. http://mennofriend.com
experienCe a QuiLt retreat at the Barn Bed and BreakFast inn -- here’s What is Waiting For You!
• Large Working area • CLose to 4 QuiLt shops • king Beds, private Baths • 21 rooms • room rates to Fit Your Budget • Bus tours oF area QuiLt shops Can Be arranged at extra Cost
guests have access to hot tub, indoor swimming pool, 3 Large Living room areas, massages, outdoor Walking and recreation areas.
Complimentary supper and full country breakfast served in our dining room. home cooking at its best!
Photograph Red Buffalo Ranch
Ingredients: 1 Tallgrass Chuck Roast ½ packet dry onion soup mix ½ cup water 1 or 2 carrots, chopped ½ onion, chopped 1 or 2 potatoes, peeled and cubed ½ stalk celery, chopped Salt and pepper to taste
For reservations call
(785) 945-3225 14910 blue mound rd. Valley falls, ks 66088 thebarn@embarqmail.com
www.thebarnbb.com
Class of 2014 retreat participants showing some of their work
spacious work area. sewing machines and materials are secured without removing them from sewing area. at the request of our quilting groups, 8 new felt boards have been installed.
shop
written by Kim Gronniger
Churchill
kansas eclectic
gift shops
in season
Fairway
Named one of America’s “top three coolest jewelry boutiques” by InDesign/InStore magazine and nominated as a Top 50 Design Retailer by JCK Design Center, Churchill features high-end handbags, home décor and antiques by appointment or online.
shopatchurchill.com gift worthy: Annie Fensterstock Vega bangle bracelet with fancy diamonds in 18-karat gold.
Lucinda’s
Wichita
This quirky boutique caters to a clientele seeking cheeky cards, funky jewelry, distinctive apparel and whimsical items like flower-shaped photo frames. lucindasoldtown.com gift worthy: Gurgle Pot pitchers that double as vases.
Pinkadilly
Topeka
Photographs Jason Dailey
Pinkadilly deftly blends new and old, from wooden doors transformed into chalkboards and repurposed furnishings (egg-incubator table, anyone?) to vintage signage and new pillows.
Bypass big-box stores and mall meandering during the holidays. Instead, visit Kansas’ charming local shops featuring fun finds for all the practical, pampered or impossible-to-please people on your gift list. Made, a unique store in Lawrence, displays handmade merchandise on eclectic furnishings culled from estate sales. Discover scented bath salts, tea towels and tiny onesies, bicycle bar glasses and brass cuffs, letterpress cards and gourmet candy bars. Items represent the craftsmanship of
gift worthy:
more than 200 American artists hailing not only from the heartland but from coast to coast. Jennifer Richards, an Etsy fan, opened Made three years ago with her husband, Matt, a former law partner, who makes popular bottle-cap magnets. “I love craft shows, so we thought it would be fun to have a store where people could get handmade items year-round,” Jennifer says.“Here our customers can smell, touch and assess the quality of the merchandise, things they can’t do online.” madeonmass.com
Holiday-scented soy candles and an “ode to Lawrence” magnet that is a sought-after stocking stuffer.
gift worthy: Pink chandelier and cow-head door.
Red Buffalo Gift Shop
Sedan
Find decorative items made by local and international artists at a fraction of department store prices, as well as gourmet salsas, jams and condiments. theredbuffalo.com gift worthy: Navajo pawn turquoise bracelets.
13 Kansas!
Magazine winter 2014
in season
don’t miss
written by Marci Penner
will travel for
Warm up with a bowl of soup around the state this winter
Café Holliday
The freshly-brewed coffees, made-from-scratch soups, on-site baked goods and sandwiches made with homemade buns are terrific—but being greeted by the engaging personality of owner, greeter and head cook Marisa Javier is the best part. Originally from Hawaii, Javier opened Little Pleasures in 2003 in the Marion County town of Hillsboro. In an area that values homemade food, Javier’s 119 N. Main, Hillsboro soups have a following.To prevent a customer revolt, lpcoffeehouse.com she serves these round bowls of hot and scrumptious recipes daily—winter and summer. In fact, some 9 a.m.-5 p.m. Tuesday-Friday regulars call ahead and ask if they can bring a large 9 a.m.-3 p.m. Saturday container for her to fill. This is soup love. Favorites include Minnesota Wild Rice and Zuppa Toscana.The ingredients for the traditional Italian “zuppa” include bacon, onion, garlic, red pepper flakes, chicken broth, heavy cream, potatoes, fresh spinach and Italian sausage made down the street at Dale’s Supermarket. Javier provides her customers the best and freshest ingredients she can find, yet the one thing she’s most happy to put into each dish is time. It takes a lot of that precious commodity to choose measuring and mixing over opening a can, but that’s why eating soup here is one of the biggest pleasures you could have.
Little Pleasures
14 Kansas!
Magazine winter 2014
Photograph by Michael Strickland
little pleasures in hillsboro
Topeka
Large pots of made-from-scratch soup are on the stove every day at this corner brick café in historic Holliday Park. Vegetable beef, chicken and noodle, and Albondigas (Mexican meatball) are among the favorites.
cafeholliday.com
Trail Days Café and Museum
Council Grove
The soups are historically good here. Limestone walls, vapors of Santa Fe Trail lore and a waitstaff in period costume serve up homemade soups and tales of history.
traildayscafeandmuseum.org
Mojo’s Espresso & Bistro
Atwood
This coffee house and bistro is trendy but the soups are basic … basically delicious. The daily soup ranges from chili to mulligatawny. 113 S. Fourth, Atwood,
(785) 626-9011
Destination Kitchen
Norton
Be tempted by all the kitchen gift items before finding the warm, wood-fired pizza oven. Cheeseburger soup and the tomato bisque are among the most popular soups.
destinationkitchenks.com
Broadway Market Coffee Shop
Sterling
Made-from-scratch soups are available until the pot is empty. Enjoy the standard roasted red pepper soup, Bombay turkey or potato leek. 105 S. Broadway, Sterling,
(620) 278-6494
Photograph courtesy of the Kansas Sampler Foundation
soup at
ride
written by Katy Ibsen
the Kansas Department of Transportation has three big jobs: keeping roads clear in the winter, making sure they are safe in the summer and revitalizing those that hold historic significance to a community or even a region. Route 66 is an obvious contender, but there are many siblings to the old Mother Road that have just as much personality. Before US-83 was US83, it was called the Great Plains Highway. Running through the communities of Liberal, Garden City and Scott City, the highway remains
significant to the beefpacking industry. It continues north to Oakley, Colby and Atwood. Outside of Kansas, US-83 stretches from Canada to the Gulf of Mexico. In 1996, 5 miles of US-83 were diverted around Liberal, allowing the commercial trucks to travel around the community instead of through it. After the project’s completion, more interstate traffic from Texas and Oklahoma used US-83, driving more traffic to retail sites in Liberal. The project totaled $9.8 million dollars. In addition, T-Works managed preservation and expansion projects in Liberal and Garden City as well as on Interstate 70 and Oakley. kdot.com
great plains highway
in season
reasons
2
reasons
we love kansas written by Fally Afani
We search Kansas far and wide to find even more reasons to love our Sunflower State. Share your Reasons to Love Kansas (see page 18).
Institute on Environmental Stewardship – Environmentalists are making great strides in Manhattan, thanks to Kansas State University’s Institute on Environmental Stewardship. The five-week summer program brings international students and leaders together to learn about environmental stewardship across cultural and international boundaries using U.S. and Kansas programs and firms as examples for creative discussion. engext.ksu.edu/summer
16 Kansas!
Magazine winter 2014
Northeastern Kansas Beekeepers’ Association – Winter may be a time to hibernate, but busy bees can find a flurry of activity with the Northeastern Kansas Beekeepers’ Association. This organization is on a mission to provide education on the benefits of beekeeping. Classes offer up-and-coming beekeepers a chance to sharpen their skills and use the winter months to get the bees ready for spring. nekba.org Facebook Group: Nekba
3
local shine
Chautauqua Isle of Lights in Beloit – Nothing fills the heart with holiday cheer quite like a spectacular holiday light display, and Beloit’s Isle of Lights is an impressive one. Chautauqua Park becomes a magnificent winter wonderland with more than 70 displays. The event is free and draws more than 18,000 people from Kansas and across the world. beloitks.org/visiting Facebook: beloitks
4
on stage Performing Arts – Theater buffs looking to come in out of the cold have a lot to celebrate in Kansas this winter. Theaters and performing arts centers throughout the state will host holiday performances, musicals, Christmas tree auctions and even holiday craft shows. Check out Travel Kansas’ website for a full list of events. travelks.com
holiday cheer
Photographs (Clockwise from lower left) Michael Henry, Shutterstock (2), Courtesy of Velvetcrate, Shutterstock (2)
1
International Inspiration
Buzzworthy
we love kansas
6
Holiday Celebrations From Atchison to WaKeeney – The holiday season doesn’t have to be stressful when you’re in Western Kansas. This November, Atchison’s Nell Hills furniture store hosts its popular and dazzling holiday open house. Over in WaKeeney, the Saturday after Thanksgiving is alive with music, entertainment and wagon rides as the “Christmas City of the High Plains” ceremoniously turns on the holiday lights. travelks.com
7
5
Surprise her!
VelvetCrate – Two sisters originally from Topeka are now working to surprise and pamper— one box at a time. The new online gift retailer VelvetCrate is a unique way to tell your sweetie you love her. Amy, of Olathe, and Allison, now based in Brooklyn, took Allison’s dream of opening a gift shop online. The boxes, which can be sent for any reason, feature a combination of chic, luxurious and fun gifts that women of all ages will love. Special occasions just got a little easier! velvetcrate.com Facebook: VelvetCrate
ringing wheat
Wheat Liberty Bell in Goessel – With Kansas known as the Wheat State, is it any wonder that you’ll find a lifesized Liberty Bell made entirely out of wheat in Goessel? The impressive work of art was commissioned by the Smithsonian in the 1970s and put together by the close-knit Mennonite community. You can see the wheat liberty bell this November in the town’s museum. facebook.com/goessel.kansas
17 Kansas!
Magazine winter 2014
reasons
8
we love kansas
Camping up High
9
Barn Owl Treehouse – Just north of Winfield awaits a unique experience that any nature enthusiasts would love. The recently constructed and custom-designed Barn Owl Treehouse guest room offers elegance for the kid at heart. From celebrations to staycations, this attraction under the stars is truly a hoot. timbercreekbarns.com Facebook: Barns at Timber Creek Bed & Breakfast
Making a comeback
Agenda, Kansas – What was once an abandoned town is now teeming with life. Even with a population only reaching into the double digits, Agenda is the very definition of quaint. From its brick sidewalks and native stone features to its soda fountain and museum, this lovely north Kansas community is a must-see for travelers seeking a slice of Americana. Directions: Agenda is located southeast of Belleville (Highway 81 and U.S. 36). Heading east on 36 out of Belleville, take 26 to 148 and turn left. Agenda will be on the left just before Elk Creek.
18 Kansas!
Magazine winter 2014
Reasons
We Love Kansas
Route 66 and Sweets! – If you’ve got a sweet tooth, head on down Route 66 to Steve’s Candy, located in Galena. The store boasts everything candy lovers could ask for, including an extensive menu of homemade treats, gift baskets and their famous Mine Run candy. The store even has a drive-up window for those in need of a quick fix. http://stevescandy.com
get outside
The 2015 edition of Kansas Outdoors features 15 must-experience outdoor activities that should not be skipped, from viewing the Greater Prairie Chicken and in Biking Across Kansas, to golfing Prairie Dunes and staying in a State Park Cabin. Add these unique opportunities to your bucket list. travelks.org
Send your “Reasons We Love Kansas” to ksreasons@sunflowerpub.com or to Reasons, KANSAS!, 1020 S. Kansas Ave., Suite 200, Topeka, KS 66612.
Photographs (Clockwise from top left) Courtesy of Timber Creek, Shutterstock (2) The Kansas Sampler Foundation
10
Mother Road Charm
events
events
kansas winter
kansas winter
Italian Heritage in SE Kansas
Veterans Day Parade
Christmas Open House
Traditional Christmas Vespers
Barry Ward: A Cowboy Christmas
Franklin
Leavenworth
Ellis County
Lecompton
Junction City
Through December 28
November 11
December 5
December 7
December 20
Enjoy a parade and flyover in Historic Downtown Leavenworth. The parade will feature numerous military and marching band entries. Begins at 10:30 a.m., military flyover at 11 a.m. lvvetsparade.com
Enjoy the Christmas season at this free event; view the newest museum exhibits in the galleries while listening to live holiday music. Hayrack rides through the downtown area of Hays will also be available. Begins at 7 p.m. elliscountyhistoricalmuseum.org
An old-time holiday celebration with music, period-decorated museum rooms and refreshments following musical performances. More than 30 vintage Christmas trees will be adorned with period and vintage decorations, and the centerpiece will be a 15-foot native red cedar Christmas tree. The museum will be decorated thought December. lecomptonkansas.com
Barry Ward’s singing and songwriting are a tribute to Western traditions and lifestyles. Join us this season for “A Cowboy Christmas.” Performances at 11 a.m. and 1:30 p.m. jcoperahouse.org
Turkey Dinner & Bazaar The Miners Hall Museum 4th-Quarter Special Exhibit, “Italian Heritage in SE Kansas,” shares memorabilia and artifacts of local Italian heritage. Admission is free. minershallmuseum.com
Driving Miss Daisy
Paradise November 8 All hunters are welcome to this turkey dinner and bazaar. Enjoy home-baked goods, crafts, cookbooks, a turkey dinner with all the trimmings and plenty of pie. Begins at 10:30 a.m. (785) 998-4473
Annual Christmas Festival & Parade of Lights
Old-Fashioned Christmas
Salina
Lindsborg
November 22
December 6 and 13
The Annual Christmas Festival and Miracle on Santa Fe Parade of Lights in Historic Downtown Salina is a family-friendly event sure to entertain the young and old alike. The festival begins at 10 a.m. and the parade at 6 p.m. salinadowntown.com
The Old Mill Museum will be filled with the sights and sounds of an old-fashioned prairie Christmas. Enjoy a shepherd sharing the traditional Christmas story in the stable, a guided tour of the historic Smoky Valley Roller Mill, Santa Claus, children’s crafts and cookie decorating. visitlindsborg.com
Alert Today, Alive Tomorrow: Living with the Atomic Bomb, 1945-1965 Montezuma January 25-March 15
Abilene
Rosanne Cash at the Historic Fox Theatre
November 7-16 Hutchinson Great Plains Theatre presents Driving Miss Daisy, set in the deep South in 1948, just prior to the civil rights movement. Having recently demolished another car, Daisy Werthan, a rich, sharp-tongued Jewish widow of 72, is informed by her son, Boolie, that hereafter she must rely on the services of a chauffeur. Performance times vary. Tickets are $19-25. greatplainstheatre.com
November 8 Throughout her remarkable career, Rosanne Cash has charted 21 Top 40 country singles, including 11 No. 1 records. Begins at 7:30 p.m. hutchinsonfox.com
Miracle on Kansas Avenue
Christmas Past at Fort Larned Fort Larned December 13 Get in the spirit of the season with a visit to Fort Larned. Special events relate to Christmas celebrations at the fort in days gone by. Free admission. nps.gov/fols
Cathedral Christmas Concert
November 29
Victoria
This annual favorite features the lighting of the community tree followed by a lighted holiday-themed parade and night of shopping in downtown Topeka. Begins at 5:30 p.m. visitTopeka.com
December 7
Germans From Russia Annual Christmas Banquet Munjor
Smoky Hill Pheasants Forever Kickoff November 8 Hays Experience hometown hospitality in a unique historic shopping district on the old Santa Fe Trail. Enjoy carolers dressed in Dickens-era costumes, horse-drawn trolley rides, holiday music and luminaries to light your way as you stroll from store to store. councilgrove.com
20 Kansas!
Magazine winter 2014
November 8 The opening day of pheasant hunting is Saturday, November 15, but first you can gather with other hunters from across the Midwest, practice shooting skills on the target range and enjoy some good food. http:// smokyhillpheasantsforever424.org
December 14 The Fort Hays State University Choral Music Department presents an annual Christmas Concert in the beautiful Cathedral of the Plains. Various other community choirs and guest performances will join in this spiritfilled occasion. Two free performances at 3:30 and 6:30 p.m. fhsu.edu/music-and-theatre/
Christmas Parade of Lights and Chili Cookoff Dodge City
The Sunflower Chapter of the American Historical Society of Germans from Russia celebrates its Annual Christmas Banquet at Munjor Parish Hall. Enjoy a social hour, refreshments, lunch and a special Christmas program. Begins at 11:30 a.m. sunflowerchapterofahsgr.net
February 6-7 Artwork produced by inmates of the U.S. Penitentiary and U.S. Disciplinary Barracks at Fort Leavenworth will be on display at this exhibit. Preview is 4-8 p.m. Friday; sale is 9 a.m.-5 p.m. Saturday. (913) 682-4459
December 1 Come to Boot Hill Museum to sample from a variety of chili styles and flavors. Vote for the “People’s Choice” and see if the judges agree. Enjoy the miniature train rides and a visit to Santa’s House while you wait for the parade. Begins at 7:30 p.m. boothill.org
Illustrations Shutterstock
Council Grove
Hidden Art Locked Away Leavenworth
Topeka
Candlelight Charm
This exhibit explores the ways that Americans experienced the atomic threat as part of their daily lives. Curated by Michael Scheibach and ExhibitsUSA, the show features more than 75 original objects from the era. stauthmemorialmuseum.org
find more events at travelks.com
21 Kansas!
Magazine winter 2014
All events subject to change.
Essay by Tom Averill
Since Midwesterners often complain, as I have, about being labeled “Flyover Country,” I wanted to fly over it. So I chartered a small plane, took several loops and flew over Kansas in order to see, not to avoid seeing. I saw wheat harvest, the Flint Hills at dusk, the places where I’d lived, the river valleys—with and without water, but visible either way—the Smoky Hills, the populated little towns of Central Kansas, where Mennonites farm by the century and not the year. I went up in a hot-air balloon, where, once lifted, silence is complete. No wind, because you are the wind. Into the sunset, from Topeka—a field that was once a little airstrip, between Fairlawn and Belle Avenues—over Lake Sherwood, 10 miles, and landing with a little bump. To fly over, to oversee (rather than overlook), is to gain perspective on my state and myself, and it comes naturally to me, for I was initiated into flight as a Kansas boy growing up in a state closely associated with aviation.
Flying Over F l y ov e r Co u nt r y
Finding Home, Being Home
T h e fee l i n g o f f l i g h t
22 Kansas!
Magazine winter 2014
Photograph Jason Dailey
At one time in his life my father was irrationally afraid to fly, and his fear clenched him tightest when I was a boy. He was scheduled to fly to a conference, and as a psychiatrist, he naturally sought help. He flew. On his return, he wondered how he might help his children so we wouldn’t have the same irrational fear. So one Saturday morning, on a clear, bright summer day, my father and mother took my two brothers, my sister and me to Billard Airport in Topeka, where we would climb the air with the pilot of a small plane for a spin around our home city. The airport, or some charter company, was having a special: Flyers were charged not by the passenger, nor the time, nor the distance, but by the pound. How inexpensive, then, to put four young children into the sky. I vividly recall the pilot unsnapping the guy-wires that held the small airplane to its resting place near the runway. He pushed the craft backward, as though it were nothing more than a child’s toy, flimsy as a red wagon, a scooter, a bicycle. We climbed
23 Kansas!
Magazine winter 2014
Kansas!
Magazine winter 2014
C r a d l e o f av i at i o n The nickname “Flyover Country” is ironic for our state, because flight and Kansas are nearly inseparable. The steady winds, open spaces and economic boom in the early 20th century brought tinkerers, builders, inventors, technicians and capitalists to Kansas to promote the new industry. Besides the names that are nationally known (Cessna, Beech, Boeing), there was Henry Laurens Call, who in 1908 formed the Aerial Navigation Co. in Girard to build “a combination airship, motor car and motor boat.” The earliest aircraft scheme in Kansas came in October of 1900, three years before the Wright brothers’ successful flight at Kitty Hawk, North Carolina, when the cornerstone of the “Carl Browne flying-machine factory” was laid at the Freedom Labor Exchange Colony 18 miles northeast of Fort Scott. The Goodland Aviation Co. built a helicopter prototype in 1910, though William J. Purvis and C.A. Wilson never managed to make it fly. Growing up in Kansas, I learned of that famous American pilot, Amelia Earhart. Later, I visited Atchison, Kansas, where Earhart was raised by her grandparents in a small home on the high bluffs above the Missouri River. Walk across the street from that home, look east to where the wide Missouri River Valley unfurls beneath you, and you can take a flight of fancy: You might be in a plane ready to soar off the bluffs.
T h e g i ft o f u n r e s t r i cte d s i g h t The in-flight death of Billard and disappearance of Earhart make the reality of flight both dangerous and exciting. My father and mother, when they put their children in a small plane, wanted the experience to be more exciting than dangerous, and it was. From the State Capitol and downtown Topeka, we flew south and east to Lake Shawnee (named for my county, which is named for an Indian tribe with a short residence in Kansas). At Shawnee Lake, as we called it, we attended day camps in the summer, fishing, canoeing, riding horses, singing songs and eating sandwiches. The lake was built by the WPA, and a jog around its perimeter is 7 miles. Next, Burnett’s Mound, in southwest Topeka, our destination so many days, when we’d hop on bicycles with a sack lunch. The mound was legend, too, named for Chief Burnett, who, in our minds, had named Topeka (from an Indian word meaning “A good place to dig potatoes”) and had said that as long as Burnett’s Mound reared up just southwest of Topeka, the place would be free of tornadoes. Unfortunately, the mound was desecrated in the early 1960s by an enormous water tank, dug into its side and painted a hideous, institutional green, the color of pistachio ice cream. The legendary June 8, 1966, tornado proved Burnett wrong, or punished the desecrators of his mound, by plowing up the southwest side of the mound and, instead of lifting, as Burnett said a tornado would do, bearing down the other side, staying grounded, cutting a huge swath through Topeka: northeast from the mound through the Veteran’s Administration Hospital, through Washburn University, through
Photographs (Clockwise from top left) Jason Dailey (2) Larry Harwood, Doug Stremel, Jason Dailey, Bill Stephens, Doug Stremel
24
up under the wing and in, and fastened our seat belts and located the barf bags. The propeller stuttered and caught; then its blades went invisible in their speed. We made a weaving line to the runway while a scratchy and incomprehensible voice answered the pilot’s matter-offact request to take off. Sudden speed pushed us back into our vinyl seats. I was afraid. I thought curiosity might help. Watching everything—the runway, the nearby field, the line of trees in the distance—would keep me from myself. Then the front wheel gave up the ground, the back wheels rose, and the thrumming rush of tires on pavement turned to a lightness, a quiet in the body, a wavering in air. The feel of flight was well worth the fear. And I’d had the feeling before, even though I was only 10 and had never been in an airplane. I knew that small moment in a jump from a high place that makes you dream you can fly, you can fly, if only the world had a little more magic (Superman’s cape, Tinker Bell’s pixie dust, Dumbo’s ears). I knew the lightness of balsa wood, punched out along precut lines and shaped into a miniature plane, released to glide along the low air of a backyard. I knew the sudden power and thrust of a propeller toy, wound tight and released, finding the higher air like a helicopter, bouncing up and up until its whirling power unwinds. My siblings and I were aloft, like Penny in Sky King. The ground moved away and everything below shrank. The view was better than any I’d ever seen, whether from a friend’s rooftop, or from the landmark of Burnett’s Mound, in southwest Topeka, or from the Kansas State Capitol, where we had climbed steep and precarious stairs to the top of the dome, the very highest place in town. Our itinerary took us first to downtown Topeka. In circling the Capitol building, I later found out, we were upholding a Topeka tradition. One of our famous citizens, Philip Billard, for whom the airport is named, buzzed the local citizenry many times during the early part of the 20th century, dazzling “the natives by flying loops and circles and figure-eights around the Statehouse dome,” according to the Kansas City Star, November 27, 1912. Kansas, in fact, was buzzing with aircraft building in the early part of the 20th century: Beech and Cessna were actual people, learning, quite literally, how to craft the air, how to build aircraft. Topeka had its own air pioneer, A.K. Longren. Even now, some 80 years after Longren built planes in Topeka, a half-century since my own flight over downtown, a small limestone building at 420 Jackson St. is painted: A.K. LONGREN AIRCRAFT WORKS. Longren tested his first aircraft outside Topeka on September 2, 1911. In 1912, Phil Billard, the mayor’s son, described by the newspapers as “daring,” bought Longren’s second plane, a biplane capable of making 80 miles an hour. Now housed in the Kansas Museum of History, it was the first biplane I ever saw, in a visit made to downtown Topeka around the same year I flew over the city in my childhood. On July 24, 1918, Billard died in an aircraft accident in France.
Snapshots of wellknown northeast Kansas landmarks that channel a sense of pride for writer Tom Averill: University of Kansas campus, Kansas River, the Kansas State Capitol dome, Amelia Earhart, Burnett’s Mound, Philip Billard Municipal Airport, the Missouri River.
residences, through downtown, where it, too, buzzed the Capitol building, tearing copper sheets from the dome, and on into the Santa Fe Shops northeast of town. In flight above Burnett’s Mound, we saw the same view as when we stood on the mound and looked toward our home, or toward downtown. Only the view was better. We flew north, to the Kansas River, to a place we called Horseshoe Cliff. From the air we could see the bike path where we cut across a field of grass, the bike trails among hillocks and small bluffs, the ones we rode, proving our daring, sick with speed and near mishap. Finally, we followed the sand-barred Kaw River northeast, back to Billard, and landed. My mother brought her Brownie home movie camera, and I can still watch my brothers and sister and I running from the plane toward our parents. We were hyper with excitement. They were hyper with what had become the fear of never seeing us again. Now, after all these years, I wonder about the logic of a man, afraid to fly, who sends all of his children up in a small plane and away. I wouldn’t do it that way, but it worked. Not a one of us siblings fears flying. Years later, I asked him why he put all his eggs in a Piper Cub basket and sent them flying. Both he and my mother can’t believe they did it. I’m glad they did. My father accomplished one other thing with the flight. He gave me a way of seeing, of orienting myself in my home.
then & now
26 Kansas!
Magazine winter 2014
Forty years later, I went up again, flying for hours in a chartered plane, making broad circles around my state, still feeling as I did when I was a boy, circling Topeka in what must have been a 30-minute flight. Flying, there was the same shock of recognition, particularly for places where I had spent some intimate time with the earth. For example, in the early 1990s I’d visited some land owned by my friends John and Sue Wine along Soldier Creek, northwest of Topeka. As I flew over the Wines’ land, I had that double sensation of feeling myself on the ground at the same time I was in the air. Flying, there was the same sense that the place below matched the map that already existed, a sensate object, in my head. Flying, there was the changing view of those places where I’d also had views of the world, none better than when I lived in Lawrence and attended the University of Kansas. The KU campus, of course, was home, familiar in all its steps and all its vistas. Mount Oread rises so high in the middle of Lawrence that the view from it almost matches the one I had when I flew between the Kansas and Wakarusa river valleys. Flying, I recognize size and scale. When a boy, flying over Topeka’s Lake Shawnee, I saw for the first time just where, and how big, and how constructed it was. The same thing happened in my later Kansas flyover, with all the reservoirs in Kansas, but particularly with Clinton Reservoir, huge to the west of our flight over Lawrence.
For three years, I lived in a farmhouse just south of the Wakarusa River, just west of where the huge earthmoving machines were constructing the Clinton dam. I never let myself imagine the extent of the Clinton Reservoir, never let myself see the fingers of water grasping so much land. Flying, we sense that the places we know well are only small islands in a huge landscape. For years, I have driven the Kansas Turnpike southwest from Emporia to Wichita. The Matfield Green Rest Area, a stark stopping point in the middle of the Flint Hills, has a memorial to Knute Rockne, who died in a plane crash nearby. Driving the turnpike and stopping at the rest area, I’ve always felt in touch with the real Flint Hills, so stark and so beautiful. In truth, driving on boundaried roads, the traveler is no more intimate with the Flint Hills than Knute Rockne, who suddenly found himself struck down, tackled, surprised at where he found the end of his life. The islands we carve out for ourselves are only a small part of any place, any landscape, any life. Flying, though, there are also those moments of feeling home. Recently, I had the opposite experience: Having flown over a place, my recognition, my feeling of suddenly being home came when driving. On one flight, I noticed what became a familiar sight from the Kansas sky: the rural high schools like Southeast of Saline. West of the Big Blue River, I flew over one that served both Riley and Leonardville, in Riley County. Later, driving Highway 24 west from Manhattan, I saw, in the distance, a familiar building, a rural high school. I anticipated what might be on the four quadrants of that corner as I drove to it, and, sure enough, from the ground I saw myself in the air, looking down on home, school, church, cemetery, in the same configuration, in the same exact place, as though I’d dreamed it again after seeing it from above. Flying, finally, is the gift of unrestricted sight, with a perspective that moves outside of time. Flying—the best of the gifts my father and mother gave me that one day—allows me to see myself, distant and small, both in the past and in the future: attending day camp at Lake Shawnee , or years later, driving down a rural highway, hoping to see what I do, in fact, see. Flying is one way to know a place: to feel a part of it, past and present. The earth seen from above is the clearest, best map. What pleasure, after you’ve seen yourself on that map, timeless and abstract, to land in your life, to find your family waiting. You are at home in this time and this place, after all. As a child I ran from that small chartered plane, every pound of me safe again, and hugged my mother and father. “What did you think?” my father asked. “I could see everything,” I said. “Good,” he said. “When can we go again?” I asked. I have answered my own question many times flying over Kansas. Thanks to my parents, I was equipped with a certain perspective, and only a little fear.
KANSAS!
RANCH COUNTRY GALLERY 206 N. Main, Eureka, KS 67045 620-583-6704
There is plenty to see and do in Kansas. Be sure to call ahead for complete details.
WESTERN, WILDLIFE & LANDSCAPES OPEN SATURDAYS TILL CHRISTMAS & BY APPOINTMENT
www.loisfrenchfineart.com Manhattan
Topeka Eureka
Humboldt Lawrence
Fine Arts Unique • Affordable • Functional Featuring the original handmade works of local, regional and national artisans. Pottery • Blown Glass • Jewelry • Woodwork • Textiles and much more
Visit us in beautiful downtown Lawrence, Kansas! 825 Massachusetts street Lawrence Ks - 785.843.0080 Also shop at:
www.phoenixgalleryks.com
advertise
in KANSAS! Magazine For details contact Sunflower Publishing (888) 497-8668 sunpubads@sunflowerpub.com
Story By Lou Ann Thomas P h o t o e s s ay b y Ta n n e r G r u b b s
sunups
&
s undowns
ode to kansas
s un u p s
&
s u n d o w n s
the unique beauty of sunrises and sunsets on the prairie inspires artists and non-artists alike
Ask any Kansan about our sunsets or sunrises and they are likely to begin waxing poetic.
One case in point: artist Allan Chow of Kansas City, whose painting Summer Sundown was featured in the 2014 Symphony in the Flint Hills Field Journal. One of Chow’s favorite places to paint is the Tallgrass Prairie. “The sunsets in the majestic rolling hills resting beneath the cloud formations are very inspiring, and the one place where I can hear my soul speak through my paintings without any noise pollution,” Chow says.
But artists aren’t the only ones who find comfort in a Kansas sunset. Becky Arseneau grew up in Pottawatomie County, and although she now lives in Illinois, she says that nothing—not even the sun dipping below the ocean horizon line in Florida—can compare to the sun setting on a Kansas wheat field or the prairie grassland. “Savoring the smell of fresh cut hay or of freshly tilled earth while watching the sunset—well, there’s nothing better,” Arseneau says. “There is a distinct feeling of calm and peace that comes over me when I watch the sun set in Kansas.” So what makes Kansas sunrises and sunsets so special? Well, it may be a case of beauty being in the eye, or the heart, of the beholder. National Geographic photographer Jim Richardson of Lindsborg believes that sunrises and sunsets evoke an emotional response from the people viewing them.
29 Kansas!
Magazine winter 2014
s u nu p s
&
s u n d ow n s
u pe fs f B r sa ud n N
s undowns & “My favorite place for both sunrises and
Shining insight from the pros
sunsets would definitely be next to a body of water. My go-to spot is Shawnee State Fishing Lake, in northern Shawnee County, because it offers interesting foregrounds and a rocky shoreline, which adds interest. “Also, be sure to look behind you when taking sunrise and sunset photos. Sometimes the most dramatic light is created in the opposite direction of the sun rising or setting.”
Eldo n
Clar k
“I love to take sunrise and sunset photos in the rolling hills of north-central Kansas, where you can see for more than 30 miles in any direction. With a major river, several farm ponds and a few nice creeks in the area, even if the light isn’t perfect I still get to hear birds singing and usually see deer, fox, pheasant and red-tail hawks. “Best tip I can offer is to get to your location well ahead of time and get set up on a tripod. Shoot before, during and after the sun comes up or goes down, and don’t give up too soon. The light will continue to change for quite awhile after the sun has set.”
J im
“We are impressed by our own human understanding of the coming and going of our days,” Richardson says. “The visual splendor is inseparable from our inner emotional dialogue.” Sunrises and sunsets mark the ever-cyclical beginning and ending of night to day and day to night. They are the transitions by which we measure our time. Stand and watch the sun appear to slowly dip below the horizon, and you can’t help but feel a sense of reflection, possibly even longing, for the current day’s end. Do the same as the sun rises again in the east at the beginning of a new day, and you might feel excited expectation or promise in what lies ahead. In Kansas, sunrises and sunsets are more than supporting players to our unique and expansive landscape. As with summer storms moving in from the southwest or winter chills blowing down from the north, we watch and we pay close attention because, living in Kansas, we often feel more exposed and more personally affected by the power, and the beauty, of nature.
30
When everything aligns perfectly and we are treated to good weather or a spectacular sunset, we appreciate it more deeply because we have lived through many days of great imperfection. When Lawrence artist Lisa Grossman, known for her stunning paintings of Flint Hills landscapes and sunsets, heads out to paint, she believes that a feeling for our place and scale here is an essential part of the process. “When observing the sunset, I often take the opportunity to shift my perception to the fact that the sun is not a flat object dropping behind a solid line, but that we in fact are on a vast sphere that’s imperceptibly rolling away from the sun,” Grossman says. “Being in the open spaces of Kansas at the evening turn, as I like to call it, is a good way for me to reconnect with the size and scale of our planet.” Topeka-based photographer Brad Neff often shoots sunrises and sunsets near Kansas lakes, rivers and ponds, so he can capture the way the light reflects and interacts with the water.
Richar ds on
“The toughest part about taking photos of sunsets is that the photos are never quite as good as the real thing. Keep in mind that what was big and glorious as you looked at it will be transferred to a small-size image once you snap the shutter. Think like a camera and accept that what you are going to get will be different from what you actually saw.”
31
Kansas!
Kansas!
winter 2014
winter 2014
Magazine
Magazine
s u nu p s
&
s u n d ow n s
“For me, a Kansas sunrise and sunset can be very spiritual,” Neff says. “All my senses are heightened with the sound of wind, waves and wildlife playing into the overall experience. I don’t really know if watching a Kansas sunrise and sunset makes me feel big or small, but I do know they help restore my soul and are something I need.” Eldon Clark, a photographer from Minneapolis, Kansas, has been watching the Kansas sky for sunups and downs, as well as the state’s unpredictable weather, since he was a little boy and his father took him out to watch storms. “I think that is what started my quest to capture the beautiful light of Kansas,” Clark says. “There is nothing like taking in the sights, sounds and smells of the Kansas countryside in early morning or late evening.” We’re fortunate that here in Kansas everyone, whether city dweller or country homesteader, is only a few minutes away from an open view and wide perspective of the horizon. And if you were born in Kansas, you tend to see this horizon
32 Kansas!
Magazine winter 2014
differently than those who simply pass through. For Arseneau, whenever she returns to Kansas she makes sure to visit her family land, north of Louisville, to watch the sunset. “Watching the sun dip below the horizon in such a familiar place brings me back to where I grew up and to where my roots still are. Kansas will always feel like home,” she says. We stand, awed by the array of pinks and purples, oranges, golds and other colors reflected by the setting or rising sun across our Kansas landscape, and it becomes a blank slate on which we can record our hopes for the day to come or count our blessings for the one just passing. Possibly we believe that if we have lived through another day on the prairie when the winds didn’t blow us away, or the snow didn’t pile up too high; when the sun rose with precision, warming the earth and all on it, and then radiantly set, allowing a cool breeze to soothe our skin, bones and spirit—well then, just maybe, it’s an indication that no matter what is transpiring elsewhere, at least for these few moments under a wide Kansas sky, something is good and right.
Photo essay and reflections by
Harland J. Schuster
Before the immigration of the Europeans, before the laying of the railroads, before the building of highways, before all this, the prairie swayed in the relentless breezes across Kansas. In this land of vast horizons and sea of grasses, immense herds of bison roamed the plains of Kansas. Testimonies of early travelers bear witness to herds so large that they spanned the horizon in countless numbers. No one could have predicted that in less than a human lifetime, from 1860 to 1880, those great herds would be reduced to only a memory. Only after bison reached the very brink of extinction, when fewer than 500 animals survived, did conservation efforts belatedly begin. Through our treasured Kansas lens, we find where they still roam and pay homage to their story.
Sandsage Bison Range
34 Kansas!
Magazine winter 2014
An attempt in 1905 to establish the Kansas National Forest near Garden City would eventually provide a home for the state’s oldest public bison herd. By 1916, it was obvious that the sand hills of southwest Kansas would never be covered with the pine trees predicted by visionaries. In that year, by order of President Woodrow Wilson, the National Forest was abolished and the land was declared a wildlife preserve. Soon thereafter, this 3,600-acre short grass prairie just south of Garden City became home to a herd of bison, and it has remained so ever since. Thanks to an active volunteer group, Friends of Sandsage Bison Range, tours of the area and its bison can be arranged. The herd size varies, adjusted according to range conditions. The climate on the High Plains
can be unforgiving, but both the bison and the shortgrass prairie plants have developed strategies not only to survive but thrive. When the rains do come, a tremendous wildflower show emerges, as if by magic, and that is my favorite time to visit. A calf, too curious for its own good, begins to stray towards me and away from the herd. An ever-watchful mother calls to her calf. At first he is reluctant to comply, but then he turns toward the herd, picks up speed quickly, and leaves only small puffs of sand kicked up in his wake. Always moving and snorting, the herd sweeps past, then flows as one body into the distance.
Tallgrass Prairie National Preserve
A small but growing herd of bison grazes the Tallgrass Prairie National Preserve. Thirteen bison, originally from the Wind Cave National Park in South Dakota, were introduced to the preserve in 2009. Currently there are between 20 and 30 animals, with plans to grow the herd to 150. The animals are usually easy to spot from the hiking trail that bisects the Windmill Pasture, a one-mile
35 Kansas!
Magazine winter 2014
hike from the visitor center. There are no fences between you and the bison, though the National Park Service reminds you that these are wild animals and that you should maintain at least a 100-yard distance from the bison as you hike through their pasture. I love to take an evening hike to Windmill Pasture toward the end of June, when the echinacea blooms and the bison calves still have their cinnamon-colored coats. I spot the herd in the distance and hike to the top of a nearby hill for a better vantage point. The wind blows through the grass, and the sky above is vast. From my new vantage point, I watch as the bison herd grazes and the brilliant green hills recede as far as the eye can see. The sun nears the horizon, and it will soon be dark. A lone coyote sends out a yelp. He sounds surprisingly close. Others somewhere in the distance answer. Soon it is a raucous exchange as they form a pack for the night’s hunt. I take one last look at the bison grazing peacefully, and then reluctantly leave my hilltop for the hike down the trail.
Maxwell Wildlife Refuge
In Central Kansas’ Smoky Hills, the 2,500 acres of native prairie grasses in Maxwell Wildlife Refuge support a herd of about 150 bison. It’s a safe bet you will see bison from the public road that winds through the refuge, but for a closer look, tours are available from the volunteer group Friends of Maxwell. Rolling hills provide a dramatic background as the herd of bison graze and move from hilltop to valley, then back to hilltop again. It is the nature of these animals never to stop moving. Just as the prairie grasses sway restlessly, the herd, too, moves perpetually, following some ancient rhythm only they hear. Nor can I explain what draws me here to view them. I spend hours watching the animals, never growing tired of it, as if drawn by some subconscious primal memory to the spectacle of grazing herds on a vast savanna.
Big Basin Wildlife Area
Located north of Ashland in Clark County, Big Basin is a geologic wonder of striking beauty. Far from popular travel routes, it sees few visitors, but those who make the effort will find a bison herd grazing peacefully amid beautiful rolling hills and valleys. The Big Basin Foundation was formed in 1972, and the 1,800 acres were purchased so that the area could be set aside and preserved. In 1974, the land was donated to the state of Kansas, and a small herd of bison was introduced. There are no tours here, but you will likely see the herd if you follow the gravel roads of the refuge. Wildflowers can be numerous here in May and June, depending on how much moisture the area has received, and these are my favorite times to visit the preserve. I find the herd on an early June evening. Upon a hill, I can easily see them grazing in the valley below, young calves frolicking around their mothers in a game of tag. A strange thought occurs to me as I clip a long lens into my tripod. If I had been here 150 years earlier, in this same location looking down on a herd of bison, I would be using a very different tool.
36 Kansas!
Magazine winter 2014
The Jerry Thomas Gallery and Collection as well as the “entire state’s Western heritage”
Jerry Thomas western Kansan, artist and historian
civil 38
Kansas!
Magazine winter 2014
elquartelejomuseum.org
shutterbugflint lifewabaunseehills
vintag
Jerry Thomas began drawing U.S. presidents on tablet paper as a 4-year-old, and he would continue to cultivate his artistic talent through college. Today the internationally renowned artist has garnered numerous honors, twice receiving the Kansas Wildlife Artist of the Year Award. He often incorporates into his paintings the Native American, Civil War and cowboy trail artifacts displayed at the Jerry Thomas Gallery and Collection. The Scott City attraction shares space with the El Quartelejo Museum, which traces western Kansas history through fossils, antique farm machinery and Native American and pioneer stories. Thomas says his artwork “catapulted worldwide” after the gallery opened in 2010. He travels extensively, packing a camera and painting supplies wherever he goes. His wildlife pieces have generated funding for habitat restoration throughout North America, but it is his military portrayals that most closely align with his own heritage. According to Thomas, the wife of a military officer who rode with George Armstrong Custer delivered his grandmother, and one of Thomas’ earliest vacation memories is of a family outing to Fort Wallace. His first western painting, Monumental Journey, captures Custer traveling from Fort Wallace to Fort Riley with his troops in 1867. Thomas received the Little Big Horn Associates Artist of the Year Award, and his work has been featured in multiple media venues, including a Custer Association of Great Britain journal cover. This year, he unveiled Dodging the Storm at the Little Big Horn Associates conference in Virginia and was honored by the Northern Cheyenne tribe in Montana. Limited edition prints of his painting, Mystic Warriors, will be sold to create college scholarships for Cheyenne students. His work has also supported scholarships for students on Montana’s Crow reservation. “My absolute passion is the historic and natural preservation of the state,” says Thomas, an Eagle Scout. “We have history like no one else, a wealth of treasures to explore and share and keep here.”
storyteller
Favorite Attraction:
city
Painter
finest pioneer ’
Photographs (from left) mike henry, Jason Dailey
Hi s tori Traveler Hi s tori a n stern Kansas scott
native american Kansas Written by Kim Gronniger
Kansas’ Finest
Favorite Attraction:
Wabaunsee County, “the most beautiful spot in Kansas”
Greg Hoots spent 33 years as a UPS driver delivering packages throughout Wabaunsee County. Ultimately, his life became much more about the gifts he received than the ones he left behind. Captivated by local lore, he collected anecdotes and captured on his camera the lush terrain that he found reminiscent of his Ozarks roots. “The people in Wabaunsee County embraced me like I was an old friend,” Hoots says. “They didn’t know me from a jar of Vicks, but they were helpful to me throughout my career.” As a child, Hoots was inspired by the weekly 1960s LIFE magazines his mother brought home, and he began taking photographs from age 7. He realized his boyhood dream in 1998 when he produced a LIFE-like history magazine about Wabaunsee County called the Flint Hills Special. Hoots formed Flint Hills Publishing in 2008 and released the book The Complete History of Lake Wabaunsee, a detailed history of this Flint Hills Lake, illustrated with historic photographs. He also authored three books for Arcadia Publishing in the Images of America series, including Wabaunsee County in 2009, Topeka in 2010, and Flint Hills in 2010. In 2012, he produced the second and final Flint Hills Special, referring to it as “my best work, by a long shot.” Hoots’ continued reverence for the area is also evident through his Photo Friday project. What began in 2012 with Hoots sending digital historical images to like-minded friends has transformed into a weekly featured photo sent to an ever-expanding group of email recipients. Grants from the Kansas Humanities Council and the Patty and Jerry Reece Family Foundation helped him create a digital collection for the county museum, as well as 40 new displays and archival storage for original photos. A member of the Wabaunsee County Historical Society Board of Directors, Hoots is an advocate for Kansas tourism, whether visitors come from across the country Greg Hoots or a nearby county. “Kansans visiting Kansas vintage photo enthusiast doesn’t generate out-of-state dollars, and fan of the Wabaunsee County Historical Society but it does keep those tourism and Museum dollars at home,” he says. Not surprisingly, his stay-cation recommendation is the Flint Hills. “Within a single mile, one can find wheat fields, spring-fed freshwater streams, rugged rolling hills, deep timber and virgin Tallgrass Prairie.” To receive the Photo Friday email curated by Hoots, contact him at gazoots@hotmail.com.
39 Kansas!
Magazine winter 2014
american experienc 626 towns Natural Promoterinterstate-70 economic development
Kansas’ Finest
Kansas Explorer Best biscuits & gravy presidential library & The High Plains and the state’s 11 physiographic regions
Foundation high
plains
WenDee Rowe LaPlant assistant director at the Kansas Sampler Foundation and Kansas explorer
40 Kansas!
Magazine winter 2014
46,876 miles
museum 8 wonders of kansas finney countyinterstate-35dwight d. eisenhower As assistant director of the Kansas Sampler Foundation, WenDee Rowe LaPlant is spending the next few months traveling to 626 Kansas towns, even unincorporated ones, to update the Kansas Guidebook for Explorers. Typically beginning the day at the best place for biscuits and gravy, LaPlant and her mentor, Kansas Sampler Foundation executive director Marci Penner, visit with shopkeepers, city and county clerks, and passersby who can point them toward architecture, art, commerce, cuisine, customs, geography, history and people to profile in the guidebook in order to promote tourism. “By the time the day is done, we’ve enjoyed another chicken fried steak or meatloaf dinner, downloaded hundreds of photos, cleaned the camera, organized our materials and discussed where we’ll be going the next day,” LaPlant says. A self-described “natural promoter,” she loves meeting people and navigating the Kansas countryside equipped with GPS and a DeLorme map to discover a town’s distinctive elements, from a WPA bridge to a blue plate special. Most of all, she enjoys “knowing that everything we do helps sustain communities and move Kansas forward.” When LaPlant’s in the office, she updates eight websites and social media pages, monitors 8 Wonders of Kansas Guidebook sales, oversees details for the annual Kansas Sampler Festival, coordinates the We Kan! conference and creates much of the design work for projects. “I also am the unofficial IT department,” she quips. LaPlant, who grew up on a farm near Tribune, worked in Finney County Historical Society and tourism roles before joining the Kansas Sampler Foundation in 2006. “Sometimes I don’t think ‘tourism’ is quite the right word to use for Kansas,” LaPlant says. “It conjures up the image of Disneyland, which doesn’t equate to opportunities in our state.” LaPlant favors Penner’s word “explorer-y” instead. “It makes you think about what there is to uncover and learn—not all from a brochure, but from your own discovery and input of time and investigation,” she says. “It becomes more meaningful and stays with you long after the roller-coaster ride is over.” kansassampler.org
Few things capture the collective American experience better than a road trip. Each year Kansans pack cars and brave backseat squabbling, motel mishaps and diner drama to stand in slack-jawed wonder before natural and man-made marvels. From state park treks to city sojourns, the ease and speed with which they can make their destination is a testament to the Federal-Aid Highway Act of 1956, signed into law by President Dwight D. Eisenhower. In a letter sent to Congress on January 24, 1956, Eisenhower wrote, “The country urgently needs a modernized inter-state highway system to relieve existing congestion, to provide for the expected growth of motor vehicle traffic, to strengthen the Nation’s defenses, to reduce the toll of human life exacted each year in highway accidents and to promote economic development.” Eisenhower’s interstate interest was first piqued by his involvement in a 1919 coast-to-coast Army vehicle convoy and later reinforced during World War II when he observed the efficiency of Germany’s autobahns in moving troops quickly. In his book, At Ease, Eisenhower writes, “This was one of the things that I felt deeply about, and I made a personal and
i-70 destination:
Eisenhower Presidential Library and Museum
absolute decision to see that the nation would benefit by it.” Covering 46,876 miles, the interstate system Eisenhower envisioned has spurred commerce, suburban communities and tourism. Kansas’ Interstate-35 and Interstate-70 highways highlight Flint Hills vistas and offer off-ramp diversions ranging from the offbeat to the inspirational. Along I-70, road-trip enthusiasts can pay homage not only to Ike at the Eisenhower Presidential Library and Museum in Abilene, but also to Walter P. Chrysler at his boyhood home in Ellis. I-35 travelers may stop at Wichita’s Exploration Place or Emporia’s William Allen White House. Others may pose for snapshots by the World’s Largest Easel in Goodland (I-70) or read the tribute to Knute Rockne at the Matfield Green Service Area (I-35) before scrambling back in their cars en route to the next adventure. The Dwight D. Eisenhower National System of Interstate and Defense Highways is just one more reason “We Like Ike.” eisenhower.archives.org
Interstate highway system The Interstate highway system stands as a lasting tribute to Dwight D. Eisenhower, one of our state’s favorite sons
Photographs (from left) aaron east, Jason Dailey
Kansas Sampler Favorite Attraction:
Kansas’ Finest
41 Kansas!
Magazine winter 2014
Open Space O p e n
H e a r t s
Pat r i c i a E . A c k e r m a n
Since January 29, 1861, the motto ad astra per aspera—“to the stars through difficulties” has represented the individual and collective spirits of a tenacious people who build their lives in the wide-open space known as Kansas. Gazing across the prairie, one can easily imagine the challenges faced by nomadic tribes, Spanish Conquistadors, French fur trappers, abolitionists, suffragettes, and pioneer immigrants traversing the rolling plains of Kansas. Centuries of humanity molded by tribulation and endless horizons have become fertile ground for poets and writers longing to reveal the intimate relationship between open spaces and human hearts. Kansas poet Victor Contoski wrote: Whoever travels into Kansas exploring the great American desert goes out into space into the interstellar distances between the lights of the prairie farms. With similar admiration, novelist Paul Wellman described the Kansas landscape in The Walls of Jericho: “The high plains at first gave him an overpowering impression of emptiness. Never before had he beheld such a sky the cosmic vault of blue appeared to occupy a good three fourths of the world, making small and unimportant the scattered farm houses with their meager clumps of ragged
trees and inevitable windmills. But though the vastness at first oppressed him, eventually it distilled in him a sensation of fetterless freedom, which he grew to love almost jubilantly.” As novelist P.S. Baber wrote, “You can never really escape. It goes with you, wherever you go. Somehow, the prairie dust gets in your blood, and it flows through your veins until it becomes a part of you. The vast stretches of empty fields, the flat horizons of treeless plains. … All that–it’s etched into your soul and it colors the way you see everything and it becomes a part of you. Eventually … when you leave, everything you experience outside of Kansas will be measured against all you know here. And none of it will make any sense.” Poet William Stafford, recalling his Kansas upbringing in the poem “One Home,” wrote that, “Wherever we looked, the land would hold us up.” The 2013 United States Census notes that there are 2,893,957 people living on 81,758.72 square miles of Kansas land, averaging approximately 34 people per square mile. After experiencing life around the world, our 34th president from this 34th State said that, “The proudest thing I can claim is that I am from Abilene.” Despite changes in politics, industry, and technology, two constants sustain life in Kansas—caring people and wide open spaces. When you can see forever, it affects your spirit.
43 Kansas!
Magazine winter 2014
T a k e s
f l i g h t
S t o r y b y Me l i n d a S c h n y d e r
A bus carrying veterans of the 73rd Bomb Wing pulled up to the partially restored B-29 Superfortress, the type of airplane that they had flown as part of the U.S. Air Force. Nearly 90 years old, the first veteran off the bus straightened his posture, walked slowly toward the bullet-shaped heavy bomber and patted its nose gear. “It was their airplane and they hadn’t seen it in a long time,” says Max Parkhurst, who witnessed the reunion in Wichita while working as a volunteer restoring the bomber. “After that, the combat stories started flowing.” Those are the stories that the nonprofit group Doc’s Friends wants to tell by returning a 1945 B-29, aptly named “Doc,” to airworthy condition and operating it as a flying museum with a permanent Kansas home accessible to the pubic. “It’s going to be a Wichita airplane all the way,” says Parkhurst, who, like many Doc volunteers, worked in the aviation industry for 36 years and has devoted countless retirement hours to the restoration. “It was built here, we’re going
to finish it here and we’re going to fly it formed Doc’s Friends and secured hangar space donated by Boeing that out of here.” gave volunteers the space needed to Close to 3,070 B-29s were built bring the airplane out of storage. from 1942 to 1946; 1,644 were built by Mazzolini turned Doc over to the Boeing in Wichita. Doc was delivered Wichita group. The cadre of volunteers from Wichita in December 1944 into has offered more than an eight-plane radar 250,000 volunteer hours calibration squadron The Boeing B-29 and counting—with based in New York technical expertise, (the squadron was In the 1940s the airplane (max global aerospace named for Snow range of 5,600 nautical miles connections and an White and the Seven ferry range or 3,250 miles with emotional connection Dwarfs). The last 20,000 pounds of bombs, max to get Doc in the air. B-29 in squadron was speed of 357 miles per hour) Volunteers include retired from service brought major advancements a project manager in 1960. Doc spent to the heavy bomber design: whose mother, father 42 years parked in and grandmother all a desert in China • Pressurized crew worked on the bombers Lake, part of an compartment during World War II, aircraft boneyard • Fully electric with 200+ and an 89-year-old occasionally used for electric motors woman who riveted Navy weapon target • Computerized weapons nose sections on the practice. system original production line. Tony Mazzolini, • Remote-controlled guns More of a an aviator with a • Advanced radar for remanufacture than bombing passion for finding restoration, the 70-yearand navigation and preserving a old, 100,000-pound • Electronic fireB-29, rescued Doc airplane will be one of suppression system in 1998. When his only two flying B-29s in restoration efforts the world. It is believed stalled in California, Information courtesy of Doc’s Friends there are no other B-29 he reached out to airframes restorable Jeff Turner, who to flying condition. at the time was Volunteers hope Doc will fly by the end the top executive at Boeing’s Wichita of 2014. operation. Doc arrived in Wichita in “It’s been a fun project for a lot of pieces in 2000 and stayed that way most of the decade. In 2013, the effort gained airplane-loving people,” Parkhurst says. “It’s going to be the thrill of a lifetime to traction when a group of local business see it fly over the Kansas sky again.” and aviation supporters, led by Turner,
44 Kansas!
Magazine winter 2014
Follow Doc’s progress: Visit B-29Doc.com or find Doc’s Friends on Facebook, Twitter and Tumblr.
Th e
Small-Town Kansas: U n w r i t t e n Ru l e s
S t o r y b y Be t h a n e y W a l l a c e
Photographs (from left) spiritaero, steve jantz, Luke Townsend
Doc
In the town of Lucas, ordering meat for the holiday season means calling before noon. Otherwise, the famed Brant’s Meat Market bologna will be all but impossible to reserve. Not that it’s a rule posted on any sign or website, it’s just known. In Paola, lawn chairs are set out the night before the Roots Festival and no one messes with them. Period. Leavenworth shoppers can park on the sidewalk when heading to Nu-Way, but nowhere else. And in Clay Center, drivers heading north and south—or through a dip—have the right-of-way on side streets. Small-town “rules”—the unwritten understandings within a small town—may be unseen to visitors and newcomers, but to the locals they’re just a part of everyday life. And in Kansas, this notion only adds to the fabric that makes up a small community. Like how anyone in Modoc can purchase a cold soda at the grain elevator office, whether or not there’s an employee present. The money is left in a box on the fridge. Or that in southern Kansas, Arkansas City is known as OurKansas City or Ark City, not Ar-kan-saw. If a town is small enough, everyone will wave to every passerby, even if it’s the “finger nod” of acknowledgment. Those new to a small town will later understand that
getting to know all your friends and neighbors is a kind of indoctrination to the way of life. These relationships are a sense of camaraderie that only those who know everyone in a community can fathom. Not that they’re openly talking about it. As longtime Courtland resident Luke Mahin says, the small-town values exist even deeper than they’re shown to outsiders. For instance, when Pinky’s, the local bar and grill, ran out of tomatoes, one citizen picked a tomato from his garden and had the cook slice it up for his BLT. Five-year Courtland resident Jenny Russell says that before she moved to town she was told, “You want to live in Courtland; you just don’t know it yet.” In fact, most do know it, but many homes in the area tend to sell by word of mouth. And when a community event comes up, it’s not unusual to find the details written on a trash can and placed in the middle of the main street for others to drive around. “Somehow they never get hit,” Mahin says. Clay Center Mayor Jimmy Thatcher, a veteran of smalltown living, sums up the pros and cons perfectly: “The big advantage of living in a small town is that you know everybody. A big disadvantage of living in a small town is that you know everybody.”
45 Kansas!
Magazine winter 2014
A Match Made I n
K a n s a s
Cinnamon rolls and chili may seem like an odd pairing—but in Kansas it’s a long-standing tradition Story by Linda A. Ditch I l l u s t r at i o n s b y D a r i n W h i t e
A steaming bowl of chili is a delicious way to combat a frigid Kansas winter, along with a warm-from-the-oven cinnamon roll. Wait, what? A cinnamon roll? I first noticed this unique culinary pairing soon after I moved to Kansas in 2010. Every school lunch menu or nonprofit fundraiser chili feed included the enticement of cinnamon rolls. How did this happen? The pairing doesn’t seem unusual to Kansas Assistant Attorney General Sarah Fertig—who knows something about the subject as her mother, Judith Fertig, is the author of the I Love Cinnamon Rolls! cookbook. Sarah says cinnamon rolls and chili were served together in the cafeteria all through her elementary and middle school years. “It never seemed odd. I knew people who would tear up the roll and eat the chili with a piece of cinnamon roll. Or they would wipe the bowl with it,” she says. Mark and Peggy Murnahan, owners of Mad Eliza’s Cakes & Confections in Topeka, were also introduced to the pairing in elementary school. Today, their shop prepares for a rush of cinnamon roll sales in the evening any time the temperature drops. “Like any soup, you want a bread to go with it,” Mark Murnahan says. “Cinnamon rolls are just natural with chili. It’s comfort food.” Then he adds, with a grin, “I’m not sure, but in school I think I heard it may be in the Constitution.” Why did schools start serving cinnamon rolls with chili? Bridget McNabb is the purchasing coordinator for the department of Hospitality Management and Culinary Education at Johnson County Community College, and she has worked in food service for Piper USD 203 and Blue Valley USD 202 for 17 years now. “Kansas was once a commodity state,” McNabb explains. More than 30 years ago, the U.S. Department of Agriculture managed a program to buy surplus commodities to keep farmers and food producers in business, and then sent those commodities to the state’s school lunch programs. “Schools had all of these commodities to use. Beans were a commodity, so they made chili. To get the kids to eat the chili, they paired it with cinnamon rolls.” Do the new school nutrition guidelines mean an end to cinnamon rolls on the menu? Cheryl Johnson, director of Child Nutrition and Wellness for the Kansas State Department of Education, says, “The good news is that schools can still serve chili and cinnamon rolls together.” She adds that starting this school year, the cinnamon roll would need to be whole grain rich (containing 50 percent or more whole grains). I picture this culinary trend sweeping the nation, with restaurants such as Tavern on the Green in New York or Spago in Los Angeles adding the combo to their menus with great fanfare. Many chefs will claim they were the ones to first conceive of this delicious food union. We’ll know better.
Cinnamon Rolls Serves 12 Ingredients For dough: 1 cup whole milk 4 tablespoons unsalted butter, softened 1 teaspoon kosher salt ¼ cup sugar 2¼ to 4 cups allpurpose flour 1 package instant (rapid-rise) yeast 2 large eggs 1 teaspoon vanilla
For filling: 4 tablespoons unsalted butter, softened ¼ cup sugar 1 tablespoon cinnamon For glaze: 2 cups confectioners’ sugar 1 tablespoon unsalted butter, softened 1 teaspoon vanilla 1 teaspoon lemon juice 2 to 3 tablespoons whole milk
Microwave milk and butter until almost melted. Whisk in sugar and salt. Set aside. Using a mixer and dough hook, combine 2½ cups of flour and yeast on low. Slowly add milk mixture, then eggs, one at a time, followed by vanilla. Add more flour, ½ cup at a time. Mix until the dough clears the sides of the bowl, about 2 minutes. Continue 2 more minutes or until you can knead by hand. Shaping dough into a ball, place in an oiled bowl, turning it over to oil the top. Cover the bowl with plastic wrap. Let the dough rise for 1 hour. Roll dough into a 20- by 16-inch rectangle on a floured surface. Spread softened butter over the surface of the dough. In a small dish, mix cinnamon and sugar and sprinkle on top of the butter. Roll dough into tube. Cut the tube into 12 pieces and place each piece spiral-side up in a 9- by 13-inch baking dish coated with non-stick cooking spray. Cover and let the rolls rise for 1 hour. Preheat the oven to 350 degrees. Bake the rolls for 1520 minutes or until golden brown. Whisk together glaze ingredients, using just enough milk for the desired consistency. Spread glaze over the top while the rolls are still warm. Serve.
47 Kansas!
Magazine winter 2014
Tour Kansas Although the Dalton brothers—Frank, Grat, Bob, Emmett and Bill—began on the right side of the law, that is not the way most of them ended their lives. Frank died in the line of duty as a deputy marshal, but his brothers eventually became outlaws, with Grat, Bob and Emmett forming the infamous Dalton Gang, often teaming up with outlaws Bill Doolin, Bill Power, Charlie Pierce, George Newcomb and others. The gang soon became known for daring robberies of banks, stagecoaches and trains across Oklahoma, Arkansas, Texas and Kansas.
The Dalton Gang
t et on
m alt m E D
Kansas
The Sunflower State is known for its famous lawmen—but its infamous villains are legendary as well
W
yatt Earp, Bat Masterson, Wild Bill Hickok— their names are synonymous with law on the Kansas frontier. Of course, Kansas is known not only for these legendary lawmen, but also for the villains and outlaws whose tales are still told to this day. In many cases, the fame of these outlaws has overshadowed those who stood on the right side of the law, and their lives have become the subject of legends.
Story by Carolyn Kaberline
Photography courtesy of Kansas state Historical Society/kansasmemory.org
outlaws
Despite their ability to elude numerous posses, the gang met its fate on October 5, 1892, when Bob, Grat and Emmett, along with Bill Power and Dick Broadwell, attempted to rob two Coffeyville banks at the same time. After they tied their horses in a nearby alley and walked toward the banks, one of them was recognized by Coffeyville citizen Aleck McKenna. As soon as McKenna realized their destination, he raised a cry to alert the townsmen, who rushed in to apprehend the gang. In the ensuing gun battle, all but Emmett were killed. Emmett was seriously wounded but recovered and was sentenced to life in prison. Later pardoned, Emmett married and wrote a book about the exploits of the Dalton gang, which was later made into a movie. Today visitors to Coffeyville can visit the Dalton Defenders Museum (daltondefendersmuseum.com, 113 E. Eighth St.). They can also visit the grave of Frank Dalton in Elmwood Cemetery while in town; since he was killed in the line of duty as a deputy marshal, his name can be found on the U.S. Marshals Roll Call of Honor.
fo T h r eM ca pt edici ur ing ne Lod ge H en ry N Posse responsible ewton B rown.
Henry newton brown
The people of Caldwell, then considered the wildest town in Kansas, hired Henry Newton Brown as their assistant marshal in 1882, and were so impressed with his work that they promoted him to marshal five months later. The town’s grateful citizens presented their marshal with a new, engraved Winchester rifle to celebrate the law and order he brought to their growing community. Area papers wrote of his exploits, proclaiming him one of the fastest guns in the Southwest and remarking on his gentlemanly ways and his freedom from vices. He soon married and purchased a house in town. But as they lavished praise on him, the people of Caldwell did not know about Brown’s outlaw past. In fact, he had been involved in the Lincoln County War in New Mexico, ridden with Billy the Kid, stolen horses and left New Mexico to avoid murder charges. Living above his means soon led Brown to return to his outlaw ways; he even enlisted his deputy and two of his outlaw friends into robbing the bank in Medicine Lodge, where he used the rifle that the citizens of Caldwell had given him. Things didn’t go as planned, however, and the four were captured. Brown was killed as an angry mob broke into the jail; the others were hanged from a nearby tree. The Winchester given to Brown can now be found on display in the Kansas Museum of History in Topeka. His grave can be found in the Caldwell City Cemetery.
49 Kansas!
Magazine winter 2014
KANSAS!
Chanute’s
Christmas In The Park
Ove
300,0r0
0
lights displaye
d
Bonnie and Clyde
Barrow and a couple of gang members tried to hijack a car from a group of people playing croquet in Meade in 1933. That attempt proved unsuccessful, as one of the women present attacked the outlaws with a croquet mallet. Barrow and one of his companions managed to escape, while the third member of the group was captured. Clyde and his girlfriend Bonnie were much more successful the following year, stealing a new Ford V-8 sedan from the driveway of Jesse and Ruth Warren in Topeka. It was in that car that the duo were killed during an ambush set by law officers in northern Louisiana later that year. The death car, riddled with bullets, was returned to the Warrens; it has been sold many times and is now on display in Las Vegas. Visitors to Kansas, however, can visit Merchant’s Pub and Plate (746 Massachusetts) in Lawrence: now a restaurant, it was originally a bank believed by many to be the first one robbed by Clyde Barrow.
ette
Running from Thanksgiving through New Year’s Day Located at Katy Park - Katy Ave. and Main St.
County, Kansas
When it comes to mass murderers, the Benders of Labette County in southeast Kansas have few rivals. Their story begins in 1871 when the family, consisting of John Sr., his wife, and grown children John Jr. and Kate, built a one-room cabin on the well-traveled road between Independence and Fort Scott. It ends in 1873, when 11 mutilated bodies were found in shallow graves in the orchard behind that cabin, according to the Kansas State Historical Society. The Benders used a canvas cloth to partition their cabin into two rooms— the one in back for living quarters, the other for a small grocery and inn for travelers. Visitors were encouraged to relax and lean against the canvas after eating a meal at a table in the front portion; when they did so, it is believed that a sledgehammer was used to bash them over the head before they were dragged to a pit below the house, where their throats were cut. The bodies would then be buried in the orchard under the cover of darkness. The disappearance of an Independence physician along the road prompted a search of the area and led to the discovery in the orchard. By then the Benders had disappeared, never to be seen again. To this day no motive has been found for their crimes; since most of the victims had little money or anything of value with them, it is believed the Benders murdered their victims for the sheer thrill of killing. Today a historical marker stands in the rest area at the junction of U.S. Route 400 and U.S. Route 169 near the site of the Bender cabin, which is rumored to be haunted. Artifacts such as hammers found in the cabin as well as newspaper clippings and photos of the cabin being moved in 1873 while authorities searched for more bodies can be found in the Cherryvale Museum (215 E. Fourth St. in Cherryvale). Although these Kansas outlaws are long gone, tales of their lives and infamous deeds will undoubtedly continue to intrigue future generations.
M M Proud Past – Brilliant Future 785-528-3714 (Osage City Hall) www.OsageCity.com
Smoke in the Spring – April 10-11, 2015 www.smokeinthespring.com
Photography courtesy of Kansas state Historical Society/kansasmemory.org
Although their crimes took place in a number of states, the infamous duo of Bonnie Parker and Clyde Barrow often frequented the Sunflower State. In fact, they believed Kansas was the best state in the Union for robbing banks because— according to the Encyclopedia of the Great Plains, it had “numerous straight roads, each intersecting every mile or so with another road, creating a network of escape routes virtually impossible to seal off.” Historic interviews suggest that Clyde robbed his first bank in Lawrence, with the help of Ralph Fults and Raymond Hamilton.
Ben de r M urder Graves Lab
The benders
The one-mile drive takes you through Pratt’s oldest and most scenic park, illuminated by thousands of lights and animated displays. Lemon Park Lights has expanded into its neighboring park, Sixth Street Park, with animated displays depicting the Twelve Days of Christmas.
Lemon Park Lights will be lit from dusk to 11pm nightly from the 1st Saturday before Thanksgiving through January 1st.
The Woodward Inns on Fillmore one GoThIc mansIon + Three sTaTely execuTIve Inns + Three FamIly Inns =
Topeka’s Luxury Lodging/ Party Destination Block
The WoodWard Inns on FIllmore Chosen ‘Best of the Midwest’ by Midwest Living Magazine 1272 SW Fillmore Street, Topeka, KS 66604 • (785) 354-7111 • www.TheWoodward.com
gallery
52 Kansas!
Magazine winter 2014
Melting in Scott Bean, Pottawatomie County
kansas!
53 Kansas!
Magazine winter 2014
gallery
kansas!
gallery
kansas!
Winter Sky Mark Kreider, Harvey County
54
55
Kansas!
Kansas!
winter 2014
winter 2014
Magazine
Magazine
gallery
gallery
kansas!
kansas!
Three Amigos Brad Neff, Shawnee County
Dyche Hall in snow Michael C. Snell, Douglas County
Winter Landscape Harland J. Schuster, Shawnee County
56
57
Kansas!
Kansas!
winter 2014
winter 2014
Magazine
Magazine
Taste of kansas
KANSAS!
Find yourselF in one oF these
unique museums this season.
There is plenty to see and do in Kansas. Be sure to call ahead for complete details.
southeast
Kansas Chicken
Historical Lecompton Civil War Birthplace Where slavery began to die
Visit Constitution Hall & Territorial Capital Museum
Rival eateries Chicken Annie’s and Chicken Mary’s have sat side by side for decades—but please don’t make us choose
10-5 pm Wed-Sat • 1-5 pm Sun Tours (785) 887-6148 www.lecomptonkansas.com
advertise
in KANSAS! Magazine For details contact Sunflower Publishing (888) 497-8668 sunpubads@sunflowerpub.com
story by Meryl Carver-Allmond photography by Jason Dailey
59 Kansas!
Magazine winter 2014
recipe: at home
German Coleslaw
T
he first thing that greets diners when they walk into Chicken Annie’s restaurant, near Pittsburg in southeast Kansas, is an actual rooster. Worry not—he’s taxidermied. But the glass-encased rooster is only the beginning of the fowl-related kitsch you’ll find in the restaurant’s darkpaneled interior. I suspect that most people don’t notice the decor for long, though, because the second thing that hits you is the smell. An almost religious aroma of salt and hot fat soak in the air, firing off a primal response in your brain: It’s time to sit down for some fried eats. That tempting smell lingers throughout “chicken house row,” where Chicken Annie’s and Chicken Mary’s (Annie’s rival restaurant) have sat side by side for decades. They’re both such institutions at this point that people often show up to meet companions for dinner at the wrong one, but, at 80 years old this year, Annie’s was there first.
60
If you happen through Pittsburg, Annie’s, Mary’s, and a few local grocery stores sell bottles of their prepared coleslaw dressing. If you can’t get there, however, this recipe is as close as I could guess at after several tastings. In 1934, Annie Pichler’s husband was disabled while working in the coal mines, which employed most of the men in the area at that time. With a family to feed, Annie turned her living room into a dining area and began serving chicken dinners to other miners to make ends meet. Chicken Mary’s began about 8 years later, when Mary Zerngast’s husband, Joe, had a heart attack. Faced with difficulties similar to those Annie had dealt with a decade earlier, Mary followed her example and opened her home to serve chicken, sandwiches and sides to the local miners and their families. According to Lana Brooks, who now helps manage Chicken Mary’s, that created quite a rivalry back in the day. Because families rarely went out to eat, each customer at one restaurant was necessarily one less customer at the other. They were direct competitors vying fiercely for business, and that
Ingredients 1 pound shredded cabbage (about ½ of a large head) cup white vinegar ¼ cup salad oil ¾ teaspoon garlic powder ½ teaspoon salt ½ teaspoon pepper ½ teaspoon sugar cup water Instructions 1) Put all of the ingredients except the cabbage in a small container with a tight-fitting lid. 2) Shake well. Using clean hands, toss the dressing with the shredded cabbage. While you can eat this coleslaw immediately, it will taste much better if you let the flavors meld overnight in a refrigerator.
61
Kansas!
Kansas!
winter 2014
winter 2014
Magazine
Magazine
the way to Real Good Chicken meant being open at all hours. “It didn’t matter what time it was,” Brooks says. “You just knocked on the back door and Mary would wake up and feed you.” The rivalry generally died down as the years passed, with the two families even intermarrying at one point (Annie’s grandson and Mary’s granddaughter, and yes, they own yet another local chicken house—Pichler’s Chicken Annie’s). But the family feud was rekindled just a few years ago when Annie’s and Mary’s faced off for an episode of the Travel Channel’s Food Wars program. I feel sorry for those judges. Not only does eating at both places make a bellyful of fried chicken to digest, the differences between the food are almost indiscernible. Both Annie’s and Mary’s offer similar sides, including German coleslaw, spaghetti, shoestring onion rings and German potato salad. Mary’s coleslaw has a slightly more pleasant vinegar-y pucker. Annie’s spaghetti has a touch more garlic. Mary’s onion rings are just a little crunchier and saltier. But the potato salad? It’s a complete toss-up. Even the chicken begins with the exact same bread crumbs. The local Frontenac Bakery makes a special sugar-free bread for both restaurants— sugar would make the chicken burn— which is then dried and ground up to form the base of the chicken breading. Of course, what happens to the bread crumbs once they arrive at each
“You just knocked on the back door and Mary would wake up and feed you.” -Lana Brooks restaurant is a state secret. When I asked, our waitress at Annie’s cocked an eyebrow at me as if I were asking for the number to her bank account. Down the road at Mary’s, Brooks just laughed. “It’s nothing magic,” she assured me. “Just basic salt, pepper and garlictype spices, but everyone does have their own special blend.” She would slip me only one other small tip: The biggest difference between Chicken Annie’s and Chicken Mary’s is that Annie’s bathes the chicken in pure eggs before dipping it in breadcrumbs; Mary’s uses a mixture of eggs and milk. “That’s the way Mary did it, so that’s the way we do it,” Brooks said, adding that she suspects Mary did it that way because eggs were too expensive to use straight. Whatever the reason behind it, the egg-and-milk dip gives Mary’s chicken just a little thicker crust, which I prefer—just the teensy, tiniest bit—over Annie’s. If you can hit only one place, begin with Mary’s, but be aware that there is a whole world of fried chicken to explore in southeast Kansas.
Chicken Mary’s 1133 E. 600th Ave., Pittsburg (620) 231-9510 Tuesday-Saturday for dinner, 11 a.m. to 8 p.m. Sunday Chicken Annie’s 1143 E. 600th Ave., Pittsburg (620) 231-9460 Tuesday-Saturday for dinner, 11 a.m. to 8 p.m. Sunday Pichler’s Chicken Annie’s 1271 S. 220th St., Pittsburg (620) 232-9260 Tuesday-Saturday for dinner, 11 a.m. to 8 p.m. Sunday Chicken Annie’s Girard 498 E. K47 Hwy, Girard (620) 724-4090 Wednesday-Saturday for dinner, 11 a.m. to 8 p.m. Sunday Gebhardt Chicken Dinners 124 N. 260th St., Mulberry (620) 764-3451 Monday, Friday, Saturday for dinner, 11 a.m. to 7 p.m. Sunday Barto’s Idle Hour 201 S. Santa Fe St., Frontenac (620) 232-9834 Tuesday through Saturday for dinner and the occasional late-night polka band
Scott Bean Photography K A N S A S L A N D S C A P E A N D N AT U R E P H O T O G R A P H S
62 Kansas!
Magazine winter 2014
63 Kansas!
Magazine
785-341-1047 | SCOTT@SCOTTBEANPHOTO.COM
winter 2014
www.scottbeanphoto.com
64 Kansas!
Magazine winter 2014
Raise a glass; Wyldewood Cellars Winery celebrates 20 years in 2015. What began with a brother and sister, Dr. John Brewer and Merry (Brewer) Bauman, teaming up to help the family ranch has turned into the largest and most internationallyawarded winery in Kansas. The original winery was in downtown Mulvane, but it burned to the ground in 1999. Shortly afterward, the family rebuilt the winery near the Mulvane exit on Interstate 35, and have never looked back. The 10acre vineyard supplies not only the southern Kansas tasting room but also tasting rooms and gift shops in Paxico and Wichita, and a small winery in St. Joseph, Illinois. Wyldewood hasn’t stopped at its 40 awardwinning varieties of wine; it also makes small-batch jellies and syrups. Elderberry wine, however, remains the business’ signature blend. Wyldewood’s use of the fruit created a new agricultural interest in Kansas—the growing of elderberries (formerly considered a noxious weed) as an alternative cash crop. Wyldewood’s matriarch, Margaret Millican, 87, still works at the winery every day and is a “leading authority” on the propagation of elderberries. wyldewoodcellars.com
Photograph shane beck photography
milestone of kansas