Day 167 Wichita - Dodge City - Kansas
Trip Start
May 07, 2008
1
178
205
Trip End
Nov 22, 2008
Dodg,
Kansas,
United States
Monday, October 20, 2008
This close to a famous city such as Dodge city, it became a must see destination. The truth be known it most likely was always in our sights!)
To follow up on the Chisholm trail, we had to back track a little to a Town south of Wichita called Wellington.
Deciding to top up with groceries first we asked Mandy to take us to the nearest Super Wal Mart.
No problem, away we go down the track north a little to the closest Super Wal Mart! WRONG, we had "reached our destination" to find ourselves outside a school and no Wal Mart in Sight. Gee Mandy you certainly test us at times!!
Ok head South to Wellington and trek our way around Wichita and find our route we travelled on yesterday bringing us into the city.
Another turn at finding a Super Wal Mart was successful, so we topped up, had morning tea and set off to Wellington, the site of a "Historic Chisholm Trail Museum"
Directed to the door by our friend Mandy, alight the Castle and walk up to find the Museum closed and the summer hours are 1-5pm, gee we are in the fall anyway.
Oh well never mind, we have found another, back in Oklahoma we plan to trek towards in the next couple of days.
We set off to find an historic marker in relation to the Chisholm trail, this lead us a little further south, until we discovered on the map a similar one on the route West we planned to take to get to Dodge City.
Around we go and find the route west, travel a distance to the road marked to have the historic marker on, left turn and cross the rail lines onto a dirt road. Travel this until it becomes a little obvious we are way past any marker and not a route travelled a lot by tourists.
Another wonderful U turn and back to the vicinity of the map mark, to not find any marker.
Never mind we will continue on West. A reasonable road through cattle country as well as Sunflower paddocks ready to be harvested for the seed, a couple of Cotton paddocks, but the new one for us was Red Wheat fields. This is a breed of wheat introduced by Russian immigrants to the country and has a lot of acres dedicated to the crop around here. It has plant similar to a corn stalk but has a high head of red wheat growing out the top. Really interesting, also we drove past a lot more of the oil Monsters sucking the black stuff out of the ground.
We diverted off to a place called Greensburg, this is listed as having the "World's Largest Hand-Dug Well".
This town was devastated by a tornado in May 2007, 95% of the town was flattened as a path of destruction went through. The town is still rebuilding and the Well was closed until everything could be rebuilt.
We were able to look down this structure that was dug in 1887 to supply the railroad and the town with water.
The Contract was done by hiring local labour that worked in crews of 12-15 working from sun up to sundown for 50cents to $1 per a day for the effort. Completed in 1888, at a depth of 109 feet and 32 feet in diameter, certainly a great engineering feat for the time. Designated as a National museum in 1937 the well was covered and became an historic attraction. It was used as a well up until 1932.
The well has steel walkway steps down into the bottom with lights showing the way, it is normally open for tourists, but as mentioned, the town is still rebuilding after being all but destroyed by a massive EF5 tornado that was nearly 2 miles wide tore a path of destruction through the town.
This small town also, usually houses the "Space Wanderer" a Pallasite Meteorite weighing in at 1000lbs, the largest found to date, but this has been moved to a nearby town until the rebuilt museum is completed by the town.
We continued our westward journey towards Dodge City, This road travelled along one of the Famous Pony Express routes for about 45 miles.
We arrived at Dodge City past the Cemetery to see a sign for Fort Dodge. Now a veteran's home and living space after the Fort was abandoned by the US Military, the Kansas State took it over to provide a place for veterans to live.
We walked around this place to view some of the old buildings, the museum was closed for renovations, (Must be our day to discover closures) but we did gain some insight from a cleaner that was a local, he filled us in a little about the veterans home as well as a little about Dodge City.
We headed through the city to find our RV park, (Gunsmoke RV park), tomorrow we will absorb the history and township that has Boot hill Historic site as a Wooden Store fronted town street, we noted that the modern shops also have wooden verandas, as we passed through. Some of the brochures have a good walking tour of the town as well as shows the sites of the historic Santa Fe Cattle Trail that passed through this town.
