Let me start off by saying that the 4th of July is every bridgetender’s definition of pure hell. Increased boat traffic, increased car traffic, increased pedestrian traffic, all with a heaping helping of alcohol mixed in, can make for a stressful shift. Please keep me in your thoughts, dear reader. I’ll need all the positive energy I can get.
I wrote this post on the day of the presidential debate, which I was dreading. With the increasing polarization and societal breakdown that’s occurring in America, it’s been hard for me to feel patriotic of late. But on this day, of all days, I wanted to hold onto something that was iconically American. I wanted to feel like there was still some hope for this country.
It’s hard to rest comfortably with the knowledge that the younger generations are inheriting a shit show of our own making. The least I can do on this patriotic day is remind them that there are a few things left in this country that haven’t been utterly and completely destroyed. Surely there’s something that looks like it did 50 years ago, when I was a child. Then I remembered I had yet to blog about my visit this year, for the first time in my life, to an actual prairie.
It’s easy to forget how vast this country is. It took me 5 days to cross it when I moved from Florida to Washington state, and I was often stunned by the long stretches of road that I traveled on that had little or no sign of human habitation. Some people might be intimidated by this, but I was thrilled (except when I was low on gas.)
Give me land, lots of land, under starry skies above. Don’t fence me in! But my route back then didn’t take me through actual, bona fide prairie land. You know, the kind that you see in a lot of the old westerns about settlers seeking farmland with a total disregard for the Native Americans who had been there for centuries. Waves of untrammeled grass and gentle rolling hills stretching off to the horizon. I had always longed to see that. Granted, prairie land has been tragically reduced over the years, but those movies had to be filmed somewhere.
Back in April, Dear Husband and I were in the vicinity of the Flint Hills, so we decided to take a ride on the Flint Hills National Scenic Byway, at least as far as Council Grove, Kansas. (We would have loved to visit Tallgrass Prairie National Preserve, just south of there, while we were at it, but we didn’t have time. There’s never enough time, is there?)
The scenic byway did not disappoint. There was quite a bit of farmland huddled against the road, but beyond and between those farms was the beautiful, endless green that I had always hoped to see. I felt like we had gone back in time to the 1800’s.
We passed one piece of public art that consisted of silhouettes of three Native Americans on horseback. It gave me a sense of what it must have been like to first encounter these people. Friendly? Hostile? Hostility would have been justified.
Osage? Kaw? I have no idea. Both lived in this area. In fact, another name for the Kaw is the Kansa, the root word for the state of Kansas. I’ll write much more about this tribe in a subsequent post. They certainly deserve to be more than a mere afterthought.
We took this trip at the right time of year to see several prescribed burns (aka controlled burns), and we saw several more plumes of smoke on the distant horizon. These burns keep the weeds to a minimum and allow the prairie grass to grow. They also add nutrients to the soil. The Native Americans were doing these burns long before any white man stepped foot on this continent. We would be well-advised to take their land stewardship seriously, and learn from it.
We also passed the Comiskey Cemetery, but we couldn’t tell if it was on public or private land, so we didn’t intrude. According to Find a Grave, this cemetery holds at least 129 memorials, such as those of Minnie and Maud Logan, twins, who lived for a month and died in 1885; and George Washington Lee, born in 1833, who lived to the ripe old age of 82. I bet Mr. Lee saw quite a bit in his lifetime.
On the roadside, we passed several oddities that are probably seen as commonplace in midwestern farmland areas. Ancient tractors, long untouched and all but melting into the ground. Gigantic balls of rusty barbed wire. It’s a world way beyond my ken. I love visiting such places.
When we finally rolled in to Council Grove, Kansas, we were hungry, so we had lunch at Hays House. It has been continually operating since 1857, which makes it the oldest such restaurant west of the Mississippi. It was founded by Seth Hays, who was Daniel Boone’s great grandson. The restaurant serves hardy fare, such as chicken fried steak and black diamond ribeye, but it also serves dishes that I’m sure you couldn’t get in this establishment in 1857, such as grilled chicken piccata and creamy artichoke fettuccini.
Afterward, we explored the area. Council Grove is a sleepy little town, population 2,140 at last census. The population has been somewhere in the 2,000’s since 1890. I suspect we saw, at most, 10 residents. The 20 other people we saw (give or take) were tourists, including a very friendly biker gang that had stopped in for lunch on their way to parts unknown.
The town’s main street is a time warp back to the mid 1800’s, and, in fact, it is part of the Santa Fe Trail. That’s why the town sprang up, of course. Their main business back then was supplying the wagon trains that were trying to fulfill what they thought was their manifest destiny. They were going west, young man, as the saying goes. Nowadays, many of the historic buildings and saloons house quaint little thrift stores and ice cream parlors.
The 900-mile-long Santa Fe Trail was, in essence, America’s first superhighway. In 1860 alone, Seth Hays’ records indicate that 5,405 Mexican and Euro-American traders, 1,532 wagons, and 17,282 mules, oxen, and horses passed through Council Grove. That’s pretty stunning if you do the math, since the trail was active from 1821 to 1880. This migration had a great impact on the land and the area tribes. You can still see the wagon ruts cutting through local fields.
I could not get over the fact that I was standing on the honest-to God Santa Fe Trail. We came to find out that we had been driving on it all day, as Route 56 follows its path. So I traveled on this famous trail, saw my first prairie, and got a sense of the area history from its cemeteries to its dusty old towns and its rusty old balls of barbed wire.
Once I tell you about the Kaw Nation, you’ll see that local history also has very a dark side. But in our culture, we have been well-trained to overlook these unspeakable things, so I have to admit that for one brief, shining moment, I felt well and truly American. And it was good.
Happy 4th of July, Dear Reader! I’ll try to enjoy it vicariously through you.
Travel vicariously through this blog. And while you’re at it, check out my book! http://amzn.to/2mlPVh5
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