E-town Kansans

Exploring Old Emporia

9 Comments on Exploring Old Emporia

My friend Roger Heineken was featured in yesterday’s Gazette. He’s walking the original town site of Emporia, the first square mile of town, raising money to fight ALS, on behalf of his fraternity, Phi Delta Theta. Lou Gehrig was a Phi Delt as was William Allen White.

So, Roger is walking the old streets of William Allen White’s Emporia and documenting the town in photographs. I’m not sure that everyone can access it, but here’s one of his photo albums on Facebook.

To read more about Roger’s walk or to donate to the cause, check out Iron Phi.

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9 Comments

  1. Thanks for sharing this, Cheryl. I have covered the southern half of Emporia, 6th to South Avenue and East to West Streets which has amounted to 17.5 miles. So far I have posted over 500 photos which give a sense of my crisscross route and of our town through time. Here are links to the three albums which should enable anyone to view, member of Facebook or not. I’m still captioning photos which is a tedious task. Bear with me.
    Album I
    http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=321520&id=540026604&l=cfbe4e227b
    Album II
    http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=323910&id=540026604&l=83363f3a1b
    Album III
    http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=327106&id=540026604&l=30fedc0db2

  3. He really is a treasure to Emporia. He’s one of those people who gives of himself to enhance life in the community. And he’s consistent about it.

    We do have some real treasures here on FOP!

  4. That was a great piece on Roger and I love the project. Between you and Roger, I’ve learned so much about this town. You’ve both been good for teaching me to feel more at home here.

  6. Never seen anything like it! Like a cloudburst. For the three weeks of my Iron Phi Challenge I had received a respectable $534 and was proud of friends and strangers who stepped forward to help out with a modest donation. Then today a switch flipped somewhere. Between 8 AM and 1 PM $854.30 was received in several large donations, mediums and smaller sums.
    Don’t know what happened.

  7. I walked again tonight ti finish up the northwestern quadrant of old Emporia, 34 blocks equaling 2.8 miles. Now, I have 3/4ths of the town site walked totaling 317 blocks or 26.4 miles.

    I wanted to walk the northeastern quadrant last as that is where the William Allen White House State Historic Site stands and where the Eastside Community Group does its work. If all goes well, I hope to finish walking on Kansas Day this Saturday. This is much earlier than I thought but the weather was moderate and this allowed me to accelerate my program.

    What will take me longer is fully annotating the albums of photos I have taken along the way. This is in excess of 750 images thus far plus I am incorporating vintage images as I can to show dear old Emporia as a deep map of time, lives and stories of Kansas people in their place, their town.

    I guess this is my little valentine to our sesquicentennial through the filter of my town in time. I have always loved Emporia, the people I have known over 40+ years and the history they have shared with me. What is more important than to instill a pride of place and appreciation for what we too often can take for granted?

    If you wish to support my effort to walk for the ALS Association through my Iron Phi program, you may use this link to learn more. You will also find links to some of my albums of photos at the bottom of the page. I’m still working on captions.

    I have been asked by the ESU Center for Great Plains Studies to write an article on this deep map concept for the fall edition of the “Tails Out of School” newsletter for teachers of History. The newsletter is a resource for activities that can augment units in the classroom. My walk is not original. It was inspired by William Least Heat-Moon’s “PrairyErth (A Deep Map)” which is transcendent modern literature in its celebration of Chase County.

    http://support.ironphi.org/site/TR/Events/General?px=1005403&pg=personal&fr_id=1040

  8. Thirty-four more blocks late afternoon in 65 degree weather. This equals 2.8 miles in the last, northeast quadrant. I plan to finish the walk of old Emporia on the 150th Kansas Day on Saturday. Stats so far: 355 city blocks walked equaling 29.6 miles through my old town site.

  9. I finished walking Old Emporia at 4:06 p.m. on Kansas Day, the 150th anniversary of statehood. The circa 1868 mile-square town site was/is comprised of 26 miles of streets. Beginning on January 1st, 2011 and on nine outings. I walked a total of 424 blocks which equals 35.4 miles.

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