Along Interstate 70

Today’s Flyover People column as seen in The Emporia Gazette:

ALONG INTERSTATE 70

Walter P. Chrysler was a man from small-town Kansas who made it to the big time. He built cars in Michigan and he built a sleek skyscraper in the heart of New York City.

On my recent trip to western Kansas, I pulled off of I-70 at Ellis to visit Chrysler’s boyhood home and museum.

Born in Wamego in 1875, Chrysler and his family moved to Ellis when he was a toddler. I noted that their home in Ellis was across the street from the railroad tracks. His father was an engineer for the Kansas Pacific Railroad and its railroad shop was where Walter Chrysler became a mechanic.

Inside the museum is a 1924 Chrysler which was made during the Chrysler Corporation’s first year of production. Also here are several portraits of Chrysler and his wife, Della, an Ellis native. The small, city-owned museum is packed with photographs and artifacts.

Moving on, I spent the night in Colby which calls itself the Oasis on the Plains. And it is a nice town.

A small silver grain bin is incorporated into the architecture of the Colby Welcome Center. The volunteer on duty, Ralph Fischer, told me that when the welcome center was under construction he noticed the grain bin being added.

“I’m a farm boy and I know that grain bins are hot in the summer and cold in the winter,” he said, adding that apparently they’ve insulated this one well. Circling the interior of that grain bin is an early 1900s panorama of Colby taken from the top of the courthouse.

When Fischer learned I was from Emporia, he said, “My favorite person in Emporia is Jim Hoy.” He told me he had really enjoyed Hoy’s “Plains Folk” and “Flint Hills Cowboys” books.

At the Prairie Museum of Art and History in Colby, is the incredible Kuska collection, I wanted to scoop up handfuls of clothing buttons and examine each one, but they were out of reach, behind glass. In my childhood days, I played with a jar of buttons that my mom kept.

Also at the Prairie Museum, I saw dozens and dozens of toys, from the cast-iron toys like my father played with to the tin toys that I played with in the ‘60s. And it gave me joy to see a mechanical pony like one I’d climb aboard as a child outside the Larned Dillon’s store to ride for a penny.

With all the toys, glassware and household items, this is a great museum to relive your own past, as well as to learn about the lives of people who came before us.

Outside the museum building are historic structures, a 1930s farmhouse and barn, and the fabulous Cooper barn which is huge, and there’s a schoolhouse and a church. There’s also a sod house which is a well-built structure and seems more permanent and sturdy than I would have expected.

In downtown Colby, I stopped at the Thomas County Courthouse. In front of this 1906 building is a fabulous sculpture by Charlie Norton of Leoti called “Spirit of the Prairie.” A woman and the child on her hip are both looking off toward the horizon. The woman’s bonnet is in her hand and she’s waving it in greeting.

Farther down the road, in Goodland, on the Sherman County square is another sculpture. This piece, by Greg Todd, is called “They Came to Stay” and is a tribute to the hardy and determined pioneers and it features a man, a woman and a plow.

An 80-foot-high easel near I-70 in Goodland holds a 24 x 32-foot reproduction of Van Gogh’s “Three Sunflowers in a Vase” painted by Canadian artist Cameron Cross.

And, should you ever find your way to the High Plains Museum in Goodland, among other pieces of local history, you’ll see a replica of the first patented helicopter made in the United States. Dreaming of flying, local residents William Purvis and Charles Wilson built a rotary-winged aircraft in 1909.

At Goodland I found myself dangerously close to the Colorado border, so I turned south to begin the trek back home.

Copyright 2010 ~ Cheryl Unruh