Day 43: Plowing Through Kansas and Nebraska

Most recently updated on February 13, 2024

Originally posted on May 1, 2021

A couple college towns. A landmark court decision. Land-grabbing western pioneers. Even a yellow brick road.

Quite a journey ahead of us today on Day 43.

We begin by staying on Interstate 70 and heading west out of Kansas City.

Within minutes, we are over the Missouri state line and into Kansas.

The Sunflower State covers almost 82,000 square miles, making it the largest Midwest state as well as the 13^th biggest in the country.

Population is a different story.

Kansas has slightly less than 3 million people, placing it 34^th among the states, just ahead of Mississippi. Its most populous city is Wichita with 395,000 people, ranking it 52nd nationwide, slightly behind Arlington, Texas. For the most part, Kansas is small towns. Of the more than 790 towns in the state, only 64 have populations above 5,000.

The territory became part of the United States with the Louisiana Purchase in 1803. The first Europeans settlers arrived in 1812.

In 1854, the Kansas-Nebraska Act opened up the area to more settlement and allowed the residents of those areas to decide for themselves whether to be slave or free states.

Both sides in the slavery issue tried to populate the region before Kansas became a state. As we mentioned on Day 42 yesterday, pro-slavery activists from neighboring Missouri poured into Kansas to try to convince residents there to become a slave state. That lead to the “Bleeding Kansas” violence.

The anti-slavery contingent won as Kansas entered the Union as a free state in 1861.

In 1881, religious leaders convinced Kansas officials to become the first state to prohibit alcoholic beverages. That ban wasn’t repealed until 1948.

In August 2022, Kansas voters were the first to cast ballots on the abortion issue since the U.S. Supreme Court ruling in June 2022 that overturned Roe v Wade abortion access rights. The proposed constitutional amendment that would have banned abortion, however, went down to a resounding defeat.

Agriculture has always been a big part of the state’s economy. Nearly 90 percent of the land here is devoted to farming and ranching. There are nearly 58,000 farms in Kansas with an average size of 790 acres. Kansas and North Dakota are the top two wheat producing states. Kansas also delivers a hefty amount of corn, soybeans, sorghum and hay.

Meatpacking has been a big industry in parts of the state. In their book “Our Towns,” James and Deborah Fallows discuss how the meat industry has kept the economy churning in places such as Dodge City in western Kansas.

They also discuss how immigrants from Mexico supplied the workforce needed at slaughterhouses and feed lots. That reality is reflected in Kansas’ demographics. About 74 percent of the state’s population is white and 13 percent is listed as Hispanic or Latino. Only about 6 percent are Black and 3 percent are Asian.

The Fallows point out that much of Kansas is politically conservative, but they have found a way to accept an economic system that relies on immigrants and undocumented workers.

One other note. Kansas isn’t necessarily as flat as you might think. Its mean elevation is 2,000 feet, 14^th highest among states. Its high point is Mount Sunflower near the Colorado border at 4,039 feet.

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We rise to 850 feet in altitude after about 40 minutes on westbound Interstate 70.

That’s where we find the town of Lawrence, a community of 96,000 people that is the sixth largest city in the state.

The settlement was founded in 1854 by the New England Emigrant Aid Company, which had brought in anti-slavery citizens before the Civil War. The town was named after Amos Adams Lawrence, who provided financial assistance to slavery opponents. For decades, there has been a Founder’s Rock in Robinson Park along the Kansas River near downtown that has commemorated the city’s 143 early settlers. Now, an effort has begun to return the sacred rock to The Kaw tribal nation and have it moved to another park.

Lawrence’s early economy was centered on agriculture and manufacturing. The first railroad arrived in 1865. The Bowersock Dam, built across the Kansas River in 1874, provided electrical power.

Today, education is a big part of the local economy.

Lawrence is home to the University of Kansas, a college established in 1866. Nearly 30,000 students are enrolled at all the university’s campuses. It employs about 3,000 faculty members.

The city is also the site of Haskell Indian Nations University, which opened in 1884. The federally operated tribal college has about 1,000 students from 140 tribal nations as well as Alaska Native communities.

Just outside of downtown is a place that is emblematic of Kansas’ “Sunflower State” nickname. On the family farm of Ted and Kris Grinter, 40 acres are dedicated every year to growing approximately 1 million sunflowers. The flowers are in full bloom from late August to mid-September and their yellow circular heads bring thousands of visitors to the Grinter’s Sunflower Farm every fall. The Grinters don’t charge admission for the tourists who want to gaze at the flowers and take their photo among them. They don’t need to make a lot of money on the sunflowers. They grow plenty of corn and soybeans on the rest of their farm’s acreage.

Lawrence also its place in movie lore. It was the filming site for the 1983 television movie, “The Day After,” about a nuclear attack that wipes out most of the population in the region.

In addition, Lawrence is the hometown of Dr. James Naismith, the inventor of the game of basketball who eventually became a University of Kansas professor, as well as poet Langston Hughes, who wrote “Youth” and “Not Without Laughter,” among other works.

The Good, The Bad and The Evel

Topeka, Kansas, at times has been a pioneer in fields such as medicine and education.

At other times, it has shown an unpleasant side of hateful intolerance.

This capital of Kansas rests at 1,000 feet elevation, just a half-hour west of Lawrence along the Interstate 70 corridor.

At 124,000 residents, it is Kansas’ fifth most populous community, revealing an ethnic mix of 66 percent white, 16 percent Hispanic or Latino and 10 percent Black.

It was settled in 1850 when members of a wagon train along the Oregon Trail started a ferry service across the Kansas River. The name “Topeka” comes from Native American words that mean “a good place to dig potatoes.”

The community grew after a military road between forts was built in the 1850s and steamboats began docking at Topeka Landing. The Atchison, Topeka & Santa Fe Railroad was headquartered here. In 1872, eight railroad lines ended in the city.

In the early 1900s, Topeka benefitted from the car industry as the Smith Automobile Company operated in town from 1902 to 1912.

Forbes Air Force Base operated from 1942 until 1973. Among other duties, it was the place where B-29 pilots embarked on their way to missions in the Pacific Ocean. Its closure prompted 10,000 people to move from Topeka. Today, the 4,200-acre complex is used as a municipal airport overseen by the Topeka Airport Authority.

In 2020, Topeka began offering people up to $15,000 to relocate to the city, a move similar to the Tulsa Remote program we saw in Oklahoma on Day 10 of this journey. The Choose Topeka program entices prospects by telling them the cost of living is 10 percent lower in their city and the average single family home costs $125,000. Program officials say they have seen an uptick in applications due to people working remotely during and after the COVID-19 pandemic.

During the past century, Topeka was the center of another groundbreaking movement, this one involving mental health professionals. The Menninger Clinic pioneered treatments for people with mental illness. Among their strategies was treating the entire individual and monitoring staff’s interactions with every patient. The clinic operated here from 1919 to 2003 before moving to Texas to be affiliated with Baylor University.

Topeka was also the site of the first African American kindergarten west of the Mississippi, set up by “exodusters” who migrated to Kansas from the Deep South. The Tennessee Town Kindergarten opened in 1839. It taught more than 200 children over 15 years before merging with Topeka Public Schools.

However, Topeka was also the locale of the Brown vs. Board of Education decision in which the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in 1954 that school desegregation was unconstitutional. At that time, the city’s high schools and middle schools were integrated but the elementary schools were not. The suit was initiated by the Topeka chapter of the NAACP. A group of 13 Black parents with 20 school-age children were enlisted as plaintiffs. Oliver Brown was chosen as the lead plaintiff because he was the only man among the group.

The landmark court case is commemorated at the Brown v Board of Education National Historic Site. The museum opened in 2004 in the former Monroe Elementary School, one of four schools to be integrated after the 1954 ruling. The school closed in 1975.

Topeka is also the home of the Westboro Congregational Church, a church long known for its anti-gay extremism. If you doubt the depth of the church’s hatred, keep in mind its website URL is godhatesfags.com.

The church was led by Pastor Fred Weston Phelps until his death in 2014. Their specialty is protesting with picket signs emblazoned with anti-gay slogans such as “Thank God for AIDS.” They’ve even shown up at the funerals of soldiers. They also picketed out front of a Topeka restaurant every day for three years because the owner hired a lesbian employee. Countries such as England and Canada have gone as far as to ban Westboro church members from entering their country.

Across the street from the church is the Equality House, a home that is painted in the colors of the Gay Pride flag. Its organizers say it is a symbol of “compassion, peace and positive change.” It serves as the headquarters for the Planting Peace organization.

Another church in town is the Central Congregational Church with a place in religious history. Charles Monroe Sheldon was pastor at the church from 1889 to 1920. In the 1890s, he came up with an idea to help bolster his sagging congregation numbers. During his sermon, he would introduce a dilemma and then end his talk with the cliffhanger question “What would Jesus do?” He’d answer the query the following Sunday and then leave the audience with yet another question to ponder. Sheldon is credited with starting the phrase “What would Jesus do?”

Topeka is also the hometown of the first and only Native American vice president. Charles Curtis served as President Herbert Hoover’s vice president from 1929 to 1933. Before that, Curtis, a member of the Kaw Nation, was a member of the House of Representatives as well as a senator who championed women’s rights. The Charles Curtis Home is now a museum, although it is closed for the moment as it is being sold.

Topeka is also home to the Old Prairie Town, a village located on the Ward-Meade Historic Site. The site includes an 1870 Victorian mansion, a replica of an 1854 log cabin and an 1890s schoolhouse as well as other 19^th century buildings that have been moved here.

Finally, we’ll take a leap of faith and tell you about the Evel Knievel Museum in town. The facility opened in 2018 as an extension of a Harley-Davidson motorcycle store. The complex includes Knievel’s 1974 “Big Red” Mack truck as well as some of the well-known daredevil’s battered helmets, motorcycles and cars. There are also videos of some of Knievel’s more famous jumps. There are reports, however, that the museum may move to Las Vegas, Nevada.

Oz and Orphans

We hit the road again, taking Interstate 70 west for another half-hour before turning sharply north on Highway 99.

We’re headed to the small town of Wamego, but just before we reach that destination, there’s something that grabs your eye.

The name alone is enough to make you stop. The Beecher Bible and Rifle Church.

The church was established in 1857 by the Rev. Henry Ward Beecher, brother of author Harriet Beecher Stowe. The reverend apparently brought armed followers from Connecticut to help Kansas a free state during the Civil War. There are reports of rifles being smuggled into the church in crates marked “Bibles.”

The church was completed in 1862 with walls made of limestone. It’s one of the oldest permanent buildings in Kansas. The church is still open and still holds Sunday services.

It’s only a few minutes to get to Wamego, a community of 4,900 residents.

The settlement was founded in 1866 as a support community for the Kansas Pacific Railroad. The name is derived from a Pottawatomie tribe. The railroad set up a division in town, which spurred growth. Wamego businesses also served travelers who were headed west.

The economy today is centered on manufacturing connected to the agricultural products from the surrounding farm fields. There is also an RW Milling plant here along with a Caterpillar factory that produces attachments for heavy construction equipment.

A number of Wamego also commute to jobs in Topeka and Manhattan, the home of Kansas State University.

What brings us to Wamego, however, is the Oz Museum.

That’s right. In the middle of Kansas is a museum dedicated to the story of The Wizard of Oz.

The museum has 2,000 artifacts from the original movie, the book and the Michael Jackson remake called “The Wiz.” There’s also props from the stage play “Wicked”. The museum opened in 2003 and is located along the town’s Road to Oz highway.

There are also a number of Oz-themed businesses in town, including Toto’s TacOz and the Oz Winery.

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It’s not the yellow brick road but Highway 24 westbound is the route we take out of Wamego.

After a little more than an hour, we reach the farthest point west we’ll be traveling in this midsection of our journey.

So, we traverse north on Highway 81 for less than a half-hour, where we meet up with Concordia.

This community of nearly 5,000 has a museum dedicated to a program that helped orphans on the East Coast as well as a record-setting mural. It also had a bar that was made famous in a Garth Brooks song.

Concordia was first settled in 1867. It expanded after the Atchison, Topeka & Santa Fe Railroad arrived in 1887. In the 1800s, many traveling performers made stops here. Among them were Wild Bill Hickok, Buffalo Bill Cody and the Ringling Brothers circus.

In 1943, Camp Concordia opened just north of town. The camp’s buildings were used to house 4,000 German prisoners of war. They were among the 300,000 German soldiers who were detained throughout the United States during World War Two. The camp closed in 1945 when the war ended. The original guard house remains on the site.

Another relic from the past here is the National Orphan Train Complex. A museum and research center are housed in the restored Union Pacific Railroad Depot. It commemorates the Orphan Train Movement that brought orphaned and homeless children from the New York City area to the Midwest.

A December 2019 story on CBS Sunday Morning detailed how the history of the orphan relocation program that was founded by pastor Charles Loring Brace. Between 1854 and 1929, more than 250,000 children were brought by train from the East Coast to the Midwest.

Concordia is also the site of the Whole Wall Mural, the longest sculpted brick mural in the United States. The artwork is 140 feet long and 15 to 20 feet high with 6,400 bricks. It’s located on the east wall of the Cloud County Museum Annex. The mural, completed in 2008, depicts the history of the county.

Finally, there used to be a bar in Concordia called “The Oasis.” You may not have heard of it, but you probably know the song that the tavern helped inspire. The now closed establishment is the bar in Garth Barth’s song “Friends in Low Places” and is even mentioned in one of the lines when Brooks sings “Think I’ll slip on down to The Oasis.”

Why this bar? It turns out Concordia is the hometown of Jim Garver, a guitarist in Brooks’ band.

Entering Nebraska

It seems like as good a place as any to turn back eastward for the next leg of our journey.

After all, we’re pretty much in the middle of the country.

Just an hour or so northwest of Concordia is Lebanon, Kansas, which is considered the geographic center of the continental United States. There’s even a monument outside of town marking the exact spot.

To get there, we’d need to turn west on Highway 36. Instead, we continue north on Highway 81 and within a few minutes we have crossed the state line into Nebraska.

The Cornhusker State is the 15^th largest state at 76,000 square miles.

However, it’s 38^th in population with slightly more than 2 million residents, just behind Idaho. Like Kansas, Nebraska consists mostly of small towns. Of the 581 communities here, only 17 have populations above 10,000. In fact, more than one-third of the state’s residents live in either Omaha or Lincoln.

That doesn’t mean small towns can’t do big things.

Kool-Aid was invented in 1927 by Edwin Perkins in Hastings, a town of 25,000 in southern Nebraska. The community celebrates in August with a Kool-Aid Days festival.

The community of Rising City with all of 337 people is the place where CliffNotes was started in 1958. Clifton Hillegass came up with his study guide by adapting a Canadian publication called Cole’s Notes. The first batch of CliffNotes provided students with relatively brief descriptions of 16 Shakespeare plays.

Nebraska is the only triple landlocked state in the country. That means you have to travel through at least three states in any direction to reach an ocean, gulf or bay.

The eastern sector of the state is part of the Great Plains. The western half is mostly rolling hills. Like Kansas, Nebraska has higher elevations than you might think. Its high point is Panorama Point near the Wyoming border at 5,429 feet. The mean elevation is 2,600 feet, 12^th highest in the country.

Much of Nebraska’s land is agricultural. It’s the third leading state in agricultural production. The state is also a major producer of beef, pork, corn, soybeans and sorghum. Much of the corn is feed for hogs and cattle. The state is also one of the world’s largest meat packing regions.

That and other industries have helped build Union Pacific’s Bailey Yard in North Platte, a community of 23,000 in central Nebraska. The 2,850-acre facility is the world’s largest railroad classification yard. The complex is eight miles long. About 1,600 employees work here. They sort, service and repair locomotives and rail cars that are headed all over North America. The yard is open 24/7 with an average of 10,000 rail cars passing through daily.

The Nebraska Territory was established in 1854 along with the Kansas Territory. Nebraska became a state in 1867, the 37^th admitted to the union.

Nebraska is the only state with a unicameral legislature. It has only one chamber in which elected senators vote on bills. There are 49 senators from districts that each represent about 35,000 citizens. The body meets for a total of 90 days in odd-numbered years and for 60 days in even-numbered years.

The state had a traditional bicameral legislature with two chambers until 1935. That’s when U.S. Senator George W. Norris convinced state officials that a single-chamber body was the way to go.

The legislature is also nonpartisan. There are no organized political parties in the chamber and the senators do not have a party affiliate associated with them.

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Shortly after we cross into Nebraska, we take Highway 136 east.

About an hour later, we land in Beatrice, a community of 12,000 that was at the center of one of the most important movements in the country in the 1800s.

The Oto tribe inhabited this area along the Big Blue River for centuries.

The town was founded in 1857 after the steamboat Hannibal carrying 300 passengers from St. Louis ran aground near Kansas City. About 40 passengers formed the “Nebraska Association” and set off together to settle a community in the unoccupied territory.

They stopped when they reached the spot where the DeRoin Trail crossed the Big Blue River. They set up an encampment and named it after 17-year-old Julia Beatrice Kinney, daughter of Judge John F. Kinney.

The town was firmly established when Congress approved the Homestead Act in 1862. The law allowed settlers to claim 160 acres of government land for a nominal $18 fee if they cultivated the property for five years. We have more details on this act that opened up the West to millions of pioneers in a special report on the 60 Days USA website.

The Homestead Act took effect at midnight on Jan. 1, 1863. Ten minutes before midnight, farmer Daniel Freeman filed a claim for some acreage 4 miles west of Beatrice. He was the first of 418 applicants on that initial day.

In 1936, Congress established the Homestead National Historic Park on the site of Freeman’s claim. The 211-acre national park contains a restored historic tall grass prairie and woodland as well as relocated homesteader’s cabin.

Beatrice grew during the 1800s in part because the Big Blue River provided the settlement with a water source for drinking as well as to power factories.

After the Civil War, former soldiers came to town as did German immigrants.

The Burlington and Missouri Railroad built a line from Lincoln in 1871. In 1879, the Union Pacific Railroad added an extension from Beatrice to Marysville, Kansas.

A number of businesses sprung up.

One was the gun and lock repair shop that F. D. Kees opened in 1874. That eventually turned into a manufacturing facility.

C.B. Dempster started a pump business in 1878. It eventually manufactured Dempster windmills. The facility closed in 2011, but began operating again in 2014 under new management as Dempster LLC.

Beatrice Foods was founded here in 1894 as Beatrice Creamery Company, mainly producing butter. It moved to Lincoln in 1898. It operated nine creameries and three ice plants. It produced ice cream as well as Meadow Gold butter. The company moved its headquarters to Chicago in 1913.

It should be noted that Gage County, where Beatrice sits, was one of the first rural areas in the nation to get electricity under the Rural Electrification Act of 1936.

The economy in Beatrice today focuses on agriculture, in particular sorghum, hogs, soy beans and dairy products. Manufacturing includes cement, tools and automotive parts.

Exmark Manufacturing has been making lawnmowers and other equipment here since 1983.

Lounging in Lincoln

It’s a straight shot up northbound Highway 77 from Beatrice to Lincoln, Nebraska.

The state capital with 295,000 residents is the second most populous city in the state, behind Omaha.

It’s home to the 23,000-student University of Nebraska as well as museums that range from tractors to quilts to roller skates. There’s also an interesting brick star on one of its downtown streets that locales say holds a world record.

The Oto and Pawnee tribes inhabited the region before the town was founded in 1856 as the village of Lancaster. The first settlers were lured here by the abundance of salt in the marshes. The city became the state capital in 1867 and was renamed Lincoln after the president.

The Burlington and Missouri River Railroad arrived in 1870 and was followed by the Midland Pacific Railroad in 1871 and the Atchison and Nebraska Railroad in 1872. The city became a railroad hub and eventually had 19 rail lines.

The Omaha-Lincoln-Denver Highway was developed in 1911 to provide a highway through the Midwest. Lincoln then became an aviation center in the 1920s. The current state Capitol was finished in 1932. It features a 400-foot Tower of the Plains that can be seen from miles away.

In the 1990s, Lincoln was designated as a “refugee friendly” city by the State Department. During that decade, it was receiving up to 1,200 refugees per year. Lincoln was named as a Welcoming City in 2013 for embracing immigrants and helping them adjust to new lives. Almost 8 percent of the city is foreign born.

In 2019, a joint project by the city and ALLO Communications finished up, providing a fiber network that makes gigabite Internet speeds available to all homes and businesses. The program has made Lincoln one of the leaders of the Midwest’s Silicon Prairie region.

The university and state government are top employers along with banking, healthcare and technology. The city also has grain and meat-packing industries as well as a Kawasaki factory that employs 1,200 people. In July 2021, the company announced a $200 million expansion at the plant that will add 550 jobs.

The city is host to an array of museums.

The Lester F. Larsen Tractor Test and Power Museum is located on the university’s east campus. It preserves the history of Nebraska’s test tractor laws. It has 40 antique tractors and is the only tractor testing museum in the world.

The east campus is also home to the International Quilt Museum. This facility has the world’s largest public collection of quilts from 50 countries. Some of the quilts are from the 1700s. One of the museum’s goals is to preserve the tradition of quilting.

Roller skating is also honored in this capital city. The National Museum of Roller Skating was established here in 1980. The facility spotlights the sport from 1819 to the present.

Lincoln is also the hometown of William Jennings Bryan, the congressman who ran for president and lost three times. Bryan was born in Illinois, but he moved here in the late 1880s and was elected to Congress in 1890. His first run for the presidency was in 1896 when he was only 36 years old, one year above the legal age to seek the White House.

Finally, locals say that O Street downtown is the longest straight “Main Street” in the world with estimated lengths from 20 to 59 miles. There’s reportedly a brick star at 13^th and O streets that proclaims that this spot is where the western United States begins.

You’d probably get a lot of argument on that point from folks in neighboring Colorado as well as other nearby states.

No matter to us.

We continue eastward tomorrow with one more stop in Nebraska before we begin an interesting two-day trip through Iowa.