Culture

Liberal Osborne Osborne County Downs Independence

By Cecilia Harris

In 1871, 17-year-old Rose Ise accompanied her new husband to homestead land in what is now Osborne County. Here they would farm and raise a family despite clouds of grasshoppers nearly destroying their crops and livelihood, and a bull snake dropping through the soil roof of their sod dugout home and falling onto the family dining table. In her later years, Ise related many of these homesteading adventures and daily challenges to one of her sons, John Ise, who made these stories the basis for his classic 1936 nonfiction work, Sod and Stubble.

John Ise, who became a Harvard-educated economics professor at the University of Kansas, would also edit Sod-House Days, a collection of Howard Ruede’s letters to his family in Pennsylvania that chronicled the 22-year-old’s challenging first year (1877–1878) as a Kansas homesteader, also in Osborne County.

The stories of these and other Osborne County homesteaders are recounted in Osborne County Kansas Scenic and Heritage Backways by modern regional historian Von Rothenberger. His book provides 11 backroad tours that take visitors to properties, roadside markers and farmland that was part of the county’s homesteading heritage. Portions of this book are also published as separate selfguided auto tours, “Sod and Stubble Country Heritage Backway” and “Rediscovering Sod House Days Heritage Backway,” both available as brochures at the Osborne County Genealogical and Historical Society’s Carnegie Research Library in Osborne, the public library in Downs, as well as other locations in Downs and Osborne.

Prairie Museum, Independence In her famous Little House on the Prairie series, author Laura Ingalls Wilder tells of her family’s pioneer adventures in southeast Kansas. A modern replica of the Wilder family’s 1870 cabin stands on this homesteading property, where visitors are welcome to visit throughout the year, including on July 31 when volunteers will hold a celebration for Laura’s sister Carrie, the one Ingalls born at this location.

Dorothy’s House in Liberal is a replication of the Kansas farm home shown in the classic 1939 film The Wizard of Oz. The Land of Oz museum complex provides an animated journey through other locations from the movie.