Of Flint Hills, Czechs and homesteads

Cabin at Homestead National Historic Park

How to get from Lincoln to Emporia, Kansas - this was my route. I plotted all sorts of small town adventures.  The distances involved made them easily achievable. I was almost shocked how easily the destinations clicked off.

A quick turn off the route south from Lincoln, and I crossed into Wilber, better known as Czech Town USA. A stone sign with a man and woman in traditional Czech garb made that clear. Little was open on a Tuesday morning, but the smokehouse carried bread products from the bakery, saving me from coming home without kolaches. I asked the store owner about the kolaches, and he said, “We just make them the way we grew up making them.” Humble, friendly once you pried the words out of him – I liked the guy immediately. But I had just an hour to spend in his town. 

As one-time home to the plan that manufactured Vise Grips, DeWitt was a small town with a big name and a reservoir of local pride. My Dad worked in DeWitt for about a year, long enough that my parents took a house-hunting trip to Lincoln. But the plant’s closure was announced, and Dad took another assignment. But there’s new life in DeWitt, and the factory runs again after years of dormancy. The same plant builds a similar product called Eagle Grips; apparently former employees gave up dollars on the hour to come back. 

Before Beatrice, I ran into my last Nebraska stop – Homestead National Historic Park (Homestead National Monument of American until earlier this year). The National Monument covers one of the first homestead sites awarded after the 1862 Homestead Act, one scouted by the man who procured it. The Homestead Act allowed any person to claim up to 160 acres and five years of cultivation and improvement. Obviously the act, signed by Abraham Lincoln, ignored the people already living on these tracts.

Visitor center shaped like a prairie plow

Surprisingly therapeutic tallgrass prairie

 This land joined the park system in 1936 and has been gradually restored to include homesteading displays as well as a restored tallgrass prairie. The park’s films account for the U.S. giving away lands of Native peoples that were not the country’s lands to give away. But I doubt that heals any wounds. The homestead site along Cub Creek includes forested bottomlands, forest sorely lacking in many homesteads. Freeman clearly picked prime land for his family’s site. Walking the property gave me more solace than viewing the history.

This was the oldest restored tallgrass prairie in the national park system, an ecosystem largely wiped out by the homesteaders’ plows. Away from ruins and farm implements, the bird calls overwhelmed. Woodpeckers had begun their spring hunt for grubs hiding in tree bark. The creek moved slowly toward its confluence with the Big Blue River.

Cub Creek on the Homestead property

To the uninitiated, Kansas and Nebraska get described as one giant corn field. The geographic truth is more complicated, especially eastern Kansas, which is dominated by the Flint Hills. The flint-heavy soil on ridgetops made those lands nearly impossible to farm, pushing the farmland to creek bottomlands and reserving the higher land for grazing. Passing reservations for the Kickapoo and the Prairie Band of Potowatomi. 

White Americans don’t think of Kansas as Indian country, but we probably should. Kansas can boast the highest ranking Native American elected official, Vice President Charles Curtis, who was of Kaw ancestry. He served as Herbert Hoover’s vice president after many terms in the Senate, the only Native American in the executive branch until Rep. Deb Haaland’s confirmation as Interior Secretary earlier in 2021. 

The road suddenly turned urban and Topeka loomed ahead. Like Lincoln, it was a medium-sized metropolis with a manageable rush hour. A cop looked at me hard after I pause to figure out where I was driving in downtown Topeka. I let him think me odd before I turned toward the state capitol, the second in a day. 

The Kansas capitol

 

Much like in Lincoln, I turned the corner and there sat the Kansas State Capitol. The building still qualifies as Topeka’ highest structure and the state’s second tallest building. In non-pandemic times, the state allows visitors access to the cupola atop the dome. At the moment, the legislative session closes the capitol to those without state business. 

Jayhawk in Topeka

Atop the dome, a Kansa Indian warrior aims a bow and arrow. For the second time that day, I walked the block of a state capitol and admired the views at different angles, as well as the statues that dotted the capitol lawn. Instead of the Kansas Turnpike, I opted for a backroad that would deliver me through more Flint Hills backcountry and drop me off just east of Emporia. Topeka vanished in a rush of cold rivers and tree-lined hills. 

A century ago, Emporia had the reputation of an enlightened small town in progressive Kansas, with a state college, a renowned newspaper (Emporia Gazette) and a newspaper publisher with presidential sway. William Allen White was largely seen as the voice of the Midwest for decades. It’s hard to tell his story without that of Emporia, and his house is now a state historic site. 

Emporia remains a lively spot in the southern Flint Hills between Topeka and Wichita. Cars lined out of the local Braum’s waiting for ice cream. I had dinner at comfortable local brewpub (Radius Brewing) in downtown Emporia. The crowd indicated the brewery was a citywide draw, as there were more older people than college students at its tables. 

The college -age waitress seemed interested in my Kansas trip and mentioned her hometown, Liberal, which was just off the route I plotted. We talked briefly about highlighting places most people crossed as fast as possible. But I told her I would consider stopping. In the hotel room I fell asleep faster than at any time in recent memory.