Toddling Through Kansas

Trousdale

2025-07-25T19:00:00.001-05:00

Trousdale is a little larger than Fellsburg. It has a church, 6 or 7 dirt roads, and a park. The homes are mostly older, with some buildings falling apart.

Besides the lit-up cross in my selfie, we also saw a fire station and an auto parts store with what looks like a meticulously maintained salvage yard.

Our timing was pretty great... we ran out of towns in Edwards County right as we ran out of daylight. It was a good day of exploring.

Fellsburg

2025-07-25T18:40:00.005-05:00

Fellsburg is a very small town with about four dirt roads. It also has an old school that someone is living in, along with some old buildings and aging homes. It's a very quiet little neighborhood, with some large, well-maintained farmhouses nearby.

We loved the beautiful sunset!

Offerle

2025-07-25T18:30:00.020-05:00

In Offerle, we saw a bank, a gas station, well-kept yards, and some grain elevators. We also saw the Kinsley-Offerle Elementary School, home of the the Coyote Pups. Wind turbines were hulking just across the county line.

The city park had a howitzer called "the spear chucker."

Zed climbed onto the howitzer and called out: "Today, Offerle. Tomorrow, the world!"

Magen approved of the park's public bathroom (high praise indeed).

Kinsley

2025-07-25T18:20:00.033-05:00

Kinsley was another fair-sized town, just under 1,500 people. We stopped at the Kinsley Food Pride to pick up some dinner. Downtown, there are lots of little businesses, including a movie theater. We saw some water coming out of the back of the theater in a sort of fountain. It didn't look intentional, but was at least interesting.

The downtown area has brick streets. Like in Belpre, we saw another water tower infested by vultures. Here, they were all over the grain elevator as well. We saw the Brodbeck Carnival, the Edwards County recycling center, a 4-H extension office, and a few little antique shops. The junior / senior high school has a very distinctive dome shape. (Home of the Coyotes!)

Along with all of these other things, we also saw a cute little Episcopal chapel, the county fairgrounds, a swimming pool, and an amphitheater. South of town, there are lots of small hills.

Lewis

2025-07-25T18:10:00.019-05:00

In Lewis, we found more grain elevators (surprise, surprise). It also had a really nice welcome sign by the highway! Near the grain elevators, we saw the Cross Mfg Inc. trailer park.

The downtown was cute, with brick buildings, a post office, city hall, library, and a number of small businesses. With a population around 400, it's a bit of a bigger town. We were amused to see a cow shed (i.e., a shed painted like a dairy cow). Some of the roads were gravel, but were very nice and well-maintained. Some other things we saw: A school with football field, a little park by water tower, churches, and murals downtown.

Belpre

2025-07-25T18:00:00.042-05:00

The bad news: My old iPhone finally gave up the ghost, taking along with it many of the photos from this trip. The good news: Here's a picture of three good-looking and goofy Hawkinson cousins (Myrick, Joel, and Olivia) from the same weekend.

In Belpre (not pictured), we found a grain elevator, a beautiful brick church (St. Bernard Church and school), and some dirt roads. It's a fair-sized little town. It also had a Mexican restaurant/liquor store, an old jail in someone’s front yard, a nice little park, a post office, and some unused downtown buildings. As in many towns this size, some old houses were falling apart, while others were well-maintained. A committee of turkey vultures was congregated on the town water tower, and the recent rain had left puddles of standing water in many yards.

The town's name is apparently a contraction of the French Belle Prairie, which is fitting: The open grasslands around here are certainly beautiful, especially after a much-needed summer rain.

Ogallah

2025-05-07T15:30:00.012-05:00

Ogallah is a tiny unincorporated community, marked by a number of old and abandoned buildings, some modest homes down gravel roads, and Ogallah Christian Church. Just down the road, you can visit the lovely historic Emanuel Lutheran Church.

Trego Center

2025-05-07T15:29:00.009-05:00

Trego Center apparently became a settlement in 1904, but there's not much left of it today. Zion Lutheran Church still stands, along with the remains of a few buildings on the other side of the highway.

Collyer

2025-05-07T13:00:00.018-05:00

Collyer is a small town of about 97 people just west of WaKeeney. It has grain elevators, a cemetery, St. Michael's church and school, a park, post office, a Depot Square, and a number of empty store fronts.

Not a lot was going on, so we sat on a bench, took a look around, and got back on the road.

Quinter

2025-05-07T12:00:00.024-05:00

Quinter is a fairly large town with many businesses. It has a park with a really fun looking pool, as well as places to play horseshoes, volleyball, and basketball. There's also a Dunkard Brethren church, a very busy downtown, schools, some beautiful old houses, a hospital, and a retirement home.

We stopped at Ray's Pharmacy to have milkshakes at the old-fashioned soda fountain.

We also enjoyed a brief ride on this dinosaur.

Little Jerusalem Badlands

2025-05-07T10:00:00.021-05:00

Little Jerusalem Badlands State Park isn't technically a town, but it's definitely worth a visit. You don't expect to see landscapes like this in Kansas, but then wham! There it is, a stunning and beautiful surprise.

We enjoyed the lovely wild flowers, the striking landscapes, and the two trails around the canyon's rim.

WaKeeney

2025-05-07T08:00:00.065-05:00

WaKeeney is a remarkably big town, at least for Trego County. At first, the name sounds like something from a Native American language, but it's not! According to TravelKs.com:

The site for the city of WaKeeney was selected in 1879 by the Chicago Land Company of A.E. Warren and J.F. Keeney. The developers combined their last names to form the unique name of their new city. The developers planned for their city to become “the Queen City of the High Plains” and had grand ideas, including the 80-foot wide brick streets which remain today.

We used WaKeeney as a base of operations for this trip. We stayed in the charming Prairie Rose Inn, which was cute, comfortable, and very affordable. The town has a lot going on, with many restaurants, businesses, and a county courthouse.

One reason for the town's large size is probably I-70, which parts ways here from US-40 as they each make their own way up the eastern slope of the Rockies.

There's a jet just chilling on the lawn in front of the Prairie Rose Inn.

We loved the colorful painted town sign downtown!

WaKeeney has its own little North Pole district. It prides itself as being "The Christmas city of the high plains." Even in May, this city utility drop box was still very much in tune with the holiday spirit!

A little birdie found a convenient home for her eggs on the back of Old Saint Nick.

Park

2025-05-06T18:00:00.026-05:00

The town of Park used to be known as Buffalo Park, according to the welcome sign. A railroad station sign also says "Buffalo Park," and the water tower (visible from five miles away) has a buffalo on it. Some other things in the town include a church, an RV park, and a fairly new restaurant called Buffalo Park Station.

We noticed a lot of houses with water tanks in front of them, which made us wonder why. We had just played at a park in Gove City, but playing at a park named Buffalo Park in a town called Park that used to be called Buffalo Park? Too irresistible for us to withstand.

Grainfield

2025-05-06T17:00:00.018-05:00

Grainfield has a high school right off of I-70. It also has a number of businesses, including a tractor dealer, farm supply store, grain elevators, and a bank. The main street is quiet, with a community center and post office.

We got out and played at the park, down the street from some cute houses. Not too much was going on in this town, but things seemed to be in good repair and well-maintained. One fun thing we noticed was that someone had turned the old opera house into a boutique.

Gove

2025-05-06T16:30:00.011-05:00

Gove, also known as Gove City, is the county seat of Gove County, but it's a pretty small town. While driving through, we saw a feedlot with calves, the Gove County courthouse, and a main street with a number of empty store fronts. There were also several modest homes with tidy lawns, as well as the Ccounty offices and a museum. The kids enjoyed climbing around on the M-60 A3 tank at Larry's RV Park.

Grinnell

2025-05-06T16:00:00.012-05:00

Grinnell is a quiet little town with grain elevators, nice homes, a park, and a few stores on Adams, the main street. There are also Methodist and Catholic churches, a fire station, and -- our kids' favorite -- a howitzer at the park. It seems to be a place where the folks know and appreciate their history.

Oakley

2025-05-06T15:23:00.027-05:00

We had a great time in Oakley! We stopped there toward the end of the day, but we still had enough energy to explore the Buffalo Bill Cultural Center and the Fick Fossil Museum. The museum shares a building with the local library and contains a huge amount of art and scientific exhibits, as well as historical artifacts from the area. Oakley also has a hospital, a couple of parks, and lots of businesses and activity.

For dinner, we stopped at The Bluff, where the food was tasty and the beer was cold. It was a great way to wait out the rainstorm that burst just as we were parking out front.

Monument

2025-05-06T14:30:00.020-05:00

Monument is a small town with some tidy little houses and gravel roads. It's surrounded by farm and ranch land. Monument Consolidated School seems to be no longer in use, though our kids had a great time swinging around on the playground for a while. Matthew was fascinated by a ruined old church and it was all I could do to keep him from poking around inside.

Page City

2025-05-06T13:30:00.020-05:00

Page City had a couple of grain elevators, but most of the buildings here seemed more or less abandoned, including this old bank where Magen got out of the driver's seat long enough to be photographed. A few inhabited homes still remain, but not many. One last bastion of the town is still around: the Bethesda Evangelical Lutheran Church, which is celebrating its 175th anniversary this June.

Russell Springs

2025-05-06T13:00:00.026-05:00

After turning south on KS-25, you can see forever in every direction. The gently sloping land was parceled out into dry, dusty fields full of dead cornstalks, and others where alfalfa was coming up thick and green. Russell Springs used to be the county seat until 1963, when it moved to Oakley, leaving the old courthouse to become the Butterfield Trail Museum. There's not much left in town, except some houses, a consolidated school that looks unused, and a pretty little Episcopal chapel.

Winona

2025-05-06T12:00:00.029-05:00

We followed US-40 along the railroad to where the map said we'd find McAllaster. But what we actually found is that McAllaster was just like one dude's house these days. No town remains to speak of. So onward we headed toward Winona!

This was a cute little town. The downtown area had a mural, a number of tidy old buildings, and some new businesses. There was a mix of historic buildings and new construction. The town was tidy and well-kept, and also the proud host of Triplains school - home of the Vikings. It did have a small park, though we didn't see much fun play equipment there. The town also had a financial institution called "The Bank," whose slogan is "Money for Rent."

Wallace

2025-05-06T11:00:00.039-05:00

Wallace is a charming old town with grain elevators, a mural, and some older buildings on Main Street, including a super cute café and antique store in the old bank building.

The lady at the café confided to us, "I may be biased, but I think our Fort Wallace Museum just east of here is probably one of the best museums around." Turns out, we agreed with her! The museum was a gem, featuring a huge collection of interesting artifacts, in beautifully built display cases. From ichthyosaurs to frontier warfare to antique pump organs, this museum had a little bit of everything. We loved it.

Sharon Springs

2025-05-06T10:30:00.028-05:00

This town is near Weskan, but with its paved neighborhood streets and nice park, it seems a bit newer. There are several churches here (we saw Methodist, Baptist, and Wesleyan ones), as well as a few grain elevators. Main Street had some thriving businesses, a food pantry, senior center, and the Wallace County courthouse. The city park was sponsored by Eastern Colorado (!) Bank. The kids really enjoyed the park; it was train-themed and had a pristine public restroom that featured an aggressively polite reminder to flush.

Weskan

2025-05-06T10:15:00.039-05:00

Weskan is the last town before "Colorful Colorado" on US-40. So of course, we had to go see the Colorado sign while we were there. A Union Pacific train came through while we were parked there on the border, which provided a great reminder of how these highways ended up where they are today. The transcontinental railroad of the 19th century was second only to the Civil War in shaping the contours of this state.

Weskan is about twelve miles south of Mount Sunflower, the highest point in Kansas. Like most towns out here, it has a grain elevator. Surrounding the town are many fields, some sown with winter crops, others brown and bare in early May. Trees have been carefully planted around homesteads and buildings, windbreaks punctuating the blustery landscape. Weskan has a Bible church and a Christian Missionary Alliance church -- one of the few CMA churches we've seen in Kansas. The town also has gravel roads, a park with a picnic pavilion, a veterans' wall of honor, and a consolidated school (Go, Coyotes!) Myrick played taps on his melodica near the veterans' memorial.

Mount Sunflower

2025-05-06T10:00:00.055-05:00

I've seen Mount Sunflower on Kansas maps since I was a little boy. All the atlases and geography textbooks mention this highest point in Kansas, so it's got to be pretty impressive, right? Well, sort of. But not in the way you might think.

The landmark itself is located on a working cattle ranch, down several well-maintained gravel roads. It's private property, but the owners have generously opened it up to the public. It features handmade folk art, a guest book with signatures visitors from all over, and a lovely view. In the surrounding fields, we saw antelope, mourning doves, meadowlarks, and lots of cattle.

The impressive thing about Mount Sunflower is the impressive thing about the Sunflower State itself: Caring, thoughtful people have made something here that's worth coming to see. It may not be very fancy, but it's charming, unique, and more than worth the trip. The hospitality, can-do attitude, and cheerful humility of Kansas are on full display here at the highest point in the state.