Kansas Day

A few years ago, everything that was new and novel came out of California.  But it wasn’t always so.  From the Civil War until the Great Depression, Kansas was the trendsetting state.  It started January 29, 1861—Kansas Day. On that date, Kansas was admitted as a free state.  It set off a tragic chain reaction of southern secession and the Civil War. The precipitating reason? When a territory passed 60,000 people they could apply for statehood.  Congress would designate whether the state was ‘free’ or ‘slave’ in a delicate balance of representation.  Kansans told Congress to get lost.  Bloody Kansas had fought for ten years, ultimately with the people deciding it was to be free.  Moreover Kansas Territory had the audacity to set its own boundaries, from Kansas City to the mining town of Denver.  Congress choked.  That was a month’s ride by horse! How could the state govern itself?  Kansas eventually agreed to go only 412 miles west—2 days by trains which were not in existence yet. Fearing backlash, Congress allowed statehood.

            Trains came in mad construction projects with 4 railroads competing to get to the Rockies first.  Kansas pioneered uniform gauge standards so that cars could be interchanged.  It suddenly linked towns to the world.  And land was free with the new Homestead Act.  But it was treeless and drought prone.  Kansans solved housing with dugouts, good so long as you have no snakes, badgers, or rats.  Soon they moved the dugout above ground in the form of sod houses for temporary shelterwhile the farmstead was built. And they invented post rocks for fencing.

            After the War, Texas had 3 million feral cattle.  But all the rails in the South were destroyed. Texas cattle had an unknown disease, Texas Fever, that would infect other cattle. (caused by ticks)  In 1867, a stockman from Illinois named McCoy got the idea to plant scales at the railroad’s end near Abilene and use a trail from Ft. Worth which a Cherokee trader named Chisholm used.  10 million cattle went over that trail in the next dozen years.  The Chisholm Trail went west of settlements in Kansas and the fordable river crossing of the Salt Fork can still be visited at Pond Creek.  Cowboy culture grew like wildfire in Kansas with 2 yr. olds selling for $2 in Texas and bringing $30 at a rail terminal in KS. It became the 30% return, growth industry before the century. “Cowtown” terminals moved west until by 1880 the Texas Trail linked to Dodge City.  They were rough places when cowboys got paid and drank/gambled it off.  That required law enforcement, not just a local militia as in the east. Just about every well-known gunslinger and cowtown sheriff has come from Kansas.  They called it “Wild West” due to the crazy weather, however, not the violence. Kansas State College became the first land grant college in 1863 and set about breeding new plant varieties, ag products, and range management techniques from the start.  Eventually 36 states set up these A&M colleges such as Oklahoma A&M in Stillwater. Before 1872, there was no barbed wire.  Kansas farmers, mobbed by trail drive cattle, discovered that the Osage Orange tree grows like a spiny shrub and makes a perfect hedge-fence to defend crops.  Hedge rows are still prominent in the central part of the state.  Kansans also grew native trees around farms for windbreaks. The Mennonites came from Russia in the 1880s bringing hard red winter wheat.  It replaced unreliable corn.  Wheat made the best bread and grew perfectly.  Booster newspapermen promoted towns like Emporia’s William Allen White.

            Women’s Suffrage started in Kansas where many women by widowhood or choice were ranchers. Kansans dabbled politically in everything from populism to Eugene Debs’ socialism.  But Kansans mostly claimed the rugged individualism promoted by Wizard of Oz. After the airplane was invented, Kansas and Oklahoma took over development of early aviation with their flat lands and top grade oil products. In 1899, the first Pentecostal church began in Topeka.  That brings us to the Kansas-Oklahoma link, the Land Runs into former Indian Territory.  While the eastern part of OK was Native Americans and Scots-Irish from nearby Arkansas, the last run, about 1/5 of the territory, Sept. 16, 1893, was the northern 76 miles of the state.  Half the 300,000 participants were Kansans.  And that is how most Lutherans came to OK.

            Prohibition and the Dust Bowl demoted Kansas as the Trend State in the 1930’s.  But a lot of its innovation and individualism has rubbed off in Northern Oklahoma.