Tours on a Tankful: Tour 3
Reliving the Old West

Driving southwest out of Great Bend on US-56/K-156, prepare to travel back in time to when the west was wild.

1) Just before the city of Pawnee Rock, look to the west for the "citadel of the prairie" landmark of Pawnee rock. Turn north at the antique store onto Ehrlich Highway through town to the Rock and Monument. The viewing platform is the height of the original Rock before the railroad borrowed from it to build track. Stand on the platform to watch other travelers on the Santa Fe Trail as the Indians did just over a century ago. This was the most dangerous point on the Santa Fe Trail; it was here that Kit Carson, the famous Indian scout, shot his mule one night mistaking it for a hostile Indian.

A semi-annual Easter pageant is held on the Rock.

2) Return to US-56/K-156 southwest to visit the business district in Larned where there are unique antique shops and the Central States Scout Museum, 815 Broadway. This museum is a premier Scout museum in the United States, with 4200 square feet of display area, 100 display cases and 35 mannequins of both boy and girl scout artifacts. It features an original drawing by Lord Robert Baden-Powell, founder of the international scouting program.

Admission: $2.00
Hours:
Daily 9 a.m. - 9 p.m.
(620) 285-6427

The museum also provides a dormitory for youth groups.

Santa Fe Trail Days are Memorial Day weekend.

3) Back to K-156 head west to the Santa Fe Trail Center, a treasure-house of exhibits concerning the trail, the region and the old West. There's something for everyone from unusual antique guns, a variety of horsedrawn equipment (including a hearse), homes, businesses and even a prairie scene with a stuffed buffalo. Outside are a sod house, a dugout house and a one-room school.

The Trail Center is also a research facility valuable to historians. It also hosts the Santa Fe Trail Rendezvous. This features guests who present scholarly papers on various aspects of the trail and daily field trips.

Each Kansas Day (January 29th) or the weekend nearest, the Trail Center features an open house with special speakers and demonstrations.

Hours:
Daily, Memorial Day-Labor Day - 9 a.m. - 5 p.m.
Rest of the year closed only on Mondays & holidays.

4) Continue west on K-156 for four miles to the entrance of the 1860's Fort Larned National Historic Site. Ten sandstone buildings, nine original and one reconstructed, complete the quadrangle of this important old west Fort. Open for visitors are the furnished barracks, hospital, bakery, blacksmith shop, carpenter ship, post school, commissary and arsenal, quartermaster building, officers' quarters, a blockhouse which doubled as a post prison and one living quarters used for several officers and their families on officers' row. In the center of the quadrangle the flag staff daily flies an 1868 US 10X20ft. "Storm" flag on holidays, the full 20X36ft. garrison flag. It's mighty impressive.

Touring the buildings is a journey into the past, but the fort is also the scene of many special events. Memorial Day weekend about 100 volunteers re-enact the old fort era. Fourth of July there are picnics and games for all. August 25th -- National Park Service Day -- means special events, films and free entry. Labor Day there are military living history programs. Candlelight tours are presented in Sept. or early Oct. A Christmas open house treats visitors to a Victorian Christmas party. This takes place on the 2nd Saturday of December.

From Memorial Day through Labor Days, park staff and volunteers present living-history programs every week-end with demonstrations and hands-on learning.

The Visitors' Center houses a museum with artifacts relating to the trail and to the military experience in the old west, a theater with an excellent information program and an exclusive theme related bookstore.

Hours:
8:30 a. m. - 5 p.m. (normally extended to 6 p.m. during the summer) (620) 285-6911.

5) Go back to K-156 west, past the Victorian sign for "Memories Restored," to US-183 and south to US-56. Head southwest in Kinsley: "Crossroads USA".

Kinsley is equal distance from New York and Los Angles as a sign in Midway Park, at the junction of highways US-56 and US-50, notes.

Nearby is Edwards County Historical Museum exhibiting tools, clothing, pioneer furnishings, and a fully furnished actual size sod house - complete with screen door and pump organ. An 1884 Methodist Church still used for weddings and Easter Services is adjacent to the sod house. A train engine, great for climbing on, is also in the park.

Hours:
May-Sept. Mon.-Sat 10 a.m. - 5 p.m. (620) 659-2420)
Winter hours by appointment: (620) 659-2235 or (620) 659-3420.

In downtown Kinsley at 200 E. 6th is the Carnival Heritage Museum. In 1901, there were six carnival families working out of Kinsley. The museum has many early carnival artifacts and 2 working carousels.

Hours:
Summer - Tues-Sat. 10 a.m. - 5 p.m.
Other times call: (620) 659-2011

White's Carousels, Inc., which repairs and builds carnival carousels, makes among others, all the Applebee's Restaurant carousel animals that are shipped all over the world. It is at 902 E. 5th.

Hours:
Mon.-Fri. 8 a.m. - 5 p.m.
Sat.-Sun. call (620) 659-2475

J.C. Winter Glass Blowing Gallery is at 620 Niles. to watch glass blowing, call (620) 659-2225.

6) Continue southwest on US-50/US-56 into the land of frontier myth. Dodge City, Queen of the Cowtowns. Stay on US-56 (Wyatt Earp Boulevard) for the Front Street replica of the 1870s Dodge City. Visit Boot Hill Cemetery, the 1865 Fort Dodge Jail, a one-room schoolhouse, Santa Fe Trail Depot, Long Branch Saloon, the Hardesty House - a furnished Victorian home, a nineteenth-century blacksmith shop and the museum, which includes an historic video presentation of the area and dinner theaters in the winter season.

Daily entertainment in the summer includes medicine shows, stagecoach and trolley rides, gunfights and a Long Branch variety show. Open year round except winter holidays.

Hours:
Memorial Day - Labor Day - Daily 8 a.m. - 8 p.m.
Rest of the year - Mon.-Sat. 9 a.m. - 5 p.m.
(620) 227-8188

During the Christmas Season, the Boardwalk is a special experience.

Look for the bronze longhorn steer statue of El Capitan, leader of many trail herds to Dodge City which is still a cowtown. Visitors can stop at an overlook east of Dodge to see one of the largest feedyards in the state.

Take a 16-mile round trip ride on the standard gauge Dodge City, Ford & Bucklin (DCF&B) Railroad across the historic land cowboys and Indians. 10 a.m. daily in the Summer. Box lunches and dinners with white-starched tablecloths and china in formal dining-car style are available Friday - Saturday. A breakfast is served, Sunday 7:30 a.m. Call ahead for meal reservations and winter hours. (620) 225-3232.

Also visit Carnegie Center for the Arts, 701 Second Ave., (620) 225-6388; Home of Stone, 112 E. Vine (620) 227-6791; Gunfighters Wax Museum, 603 Fifth Ave., (620) 225-7311; Kansas Teachers' Hall of Fame, 603 Fifth Ave., (620) 225-7311. Hours vary; call ahead.

Kansas Soldiers' Home and Fort Dodge, guard of the Santa Fe Trail, is 5 miles east on K-154. There are 7 Fort buildings, a library and a museum. (620) 227-2121. Santa Fe Trail tracks are visible at a pullout 9 miles west of Dodge city on US-50.

Dodge City Days are when the cowboys (and lots of others) come to town for rodeos and other big events. This is the last week of July and the first week of August.

7) Come out of Dodge City on US-56 east to US-283 north across high plains to Jetmore. A small town, it features interesting Victorian buildings, a beautiful historic mural an antique shop and a lake.

8) On north, Gneiss City boasts the "Skyscraper of the Plains," an 1890 four-story Romanesque-style native stone bank building. It houses offices and a museum.

Hours:
Mon.-Fri 9 a.m. - 12 p.m. (785) 798-2413

9) At Ness City connect with K-96 east into Post Rock Country, famous for its intricately-cut limestone fence posts. Four miles north of Rush Center on US-183 in La Crosse is the Post Rock Museum, which shows how early pioneers laboriously cut the rock and shaped in into 300-pound fence posts, which are still plentiful in the area.

And what hangs on these posts? Barbed-wire! La Crosse, the barbed-wire capital of the world, hosts a barbed-wire show and swap meet early in May. Collectors come form all over the nation to participate in the events and enter fence-splicing contest. Post Rock Museum (785) 222-2719. Barbed-Wire Museum (785) 222-9900 and Rush County Historical Museum (785) 222-2719 are located at the south end of La Crosse.

Hours for all three:
Summer - Mon.-Sat. 10 a.m. - 4:30 p.m.
Sunday 1-4:30 p.m.
Call for winter hours

10) Return to K-96 and Rush Center for the St. Patrick's Day Parade and Irish Stew Feed held the Saturday nearest St. Patrick's Day. Near Halloween look for "spooks" on the east edge of town.

Drive east on K-96 to Great Bend.

Tours on a Tankful Main Menu