8-3-24- Scott City, KS

If I were to describe Kansas in a few words, they would be, “flat and windy.”  Or, “completely flat and very damned windy.”  Our last two drive days have been difficult and at times scary. 

You really don't want a sudden
wind gust to blow you over 
the centerline when you 
encounter these.

The back roads tend to be shy on shoulders, which doesn’t give us a whole lot of wiggle room driving this billboard in a sidewind.  And so we don’t make very good time, as you can imagine.  The interesting things we see and learn make it all worth it but often it does scare the shit out of me.

 

Lake Scott State Park sits in a massive canyon surrounded by rocky bluffs.  The canyon was formed over the millennia by the Ladder Creek.  A fellow named Herbert Steele and his wife, Eliza, homesteaded in the canyon in 1892, originally living in a dugout in the side of a hill.  By the following year, they had constructed a seven-room sandstone house where they lived for the rest of their lives.  They farmed vegetables and fruit and had a variety of ranch animals and survived in this way.  The park was initially formed when the Steeles sold 640 acres of land to Kansas in 1928 for $18/acre ($205,000 today) with the understanding that they would continue to live in their home.  Their dream of the land becoming a park thus became a reality.  Herbert died in 1929 and Eliza died in 1930.  All 3 of their children preceded them in death and the door to their home was apparently locked by the state.  The original contents remain today exactly as the Steeles left them.  

Steele Home built in 1893

Eliza's sewing machine and washtub
in her workroom in the basement

Still sitting on the table,
Sears Roebuck Catalogue from 1897

Pond in the back with 
a rock love seat

Kitchen and dining area

Front room with china cabinet
and cook stove

Ice house and food storage building

Herbert's workshop in the basement

Herbert and Eliza Steele

The master bedroom

Back of the house with a
door to the back yard

 

In the near future, this will be a
cabin for rent in the park.  How
cool is that?!  (Where's the a/c?)

Now the park is over 1,000 acres in size.  In the 1930s, the state of Kansas and the CCC built a dam on Ladder Creek to create the beautiful 100-acre Lake Scott (named after General Winfield Scott, a hero of the Mexican War).  All of this is the more recent history.  Evidence exists and tells of tribes who have passed this way since the 1300s.  Herbert Steele did a bit of digging himself and, when he found artifacts, he invited scientists to excavate.  In 1899, led by Professor S. W. Williston, they determined that it was the ruins of El Cuartelejo, a village that was occupied at various times by different tribes of Indians.  The Taos and Plaines Apache tribes were the first to occupy the pueblo as far back as the 1604.  Williston and his crew attempted to reconstruct the foundations of El Cuartelejo based upon the artifacts they uncovered.  The ruins lay within the limits of Lake Scott State Park.

El Cuartelejo monument

Partially-reconstructed ruins
of El Cuartelejo

 

John Lennon (and many others) wanted mankind to imagine peace but there are always assholes around who want to kill other people, sorry John.  In 1878, a band of Cheyenne who had been banished to a reservation in Oklahoma, got homesick and decided to escape and head for home in Kansas.  The US Army caught up with them and the final battle of the Indian Wars in Kansas took place at Punished Woman’s Fork, just south of Lake Scott State Park.  There were 92 Cheyenne warriors.  One hundred women and 141 children were hidden in a den, safe from the battle.  The final score was Cheyenne-1, Army-0.  Eventually, the Cheyenne were rounded up elsewhere and herded back to Oklahoma.  The Punished Woman’s Fork battle, the den and several rifle mounds are now a protected monument but it wasn’t always called that.  In fact, it was called Squaw’s Den but recent pc idiots protested over the word, “Squaw,” and forced the change to Punished Woman, whatever that means.

Squaw's Den

Punished Woman's Fork Battle monument

 

In the afternoon heat and humidity, Lake Scott water beckoned.  We spent the afternoon on the beach, swimming, cooling down with a cold brew and paddleboarding.  It’s been a year since I was on my paddleboard and my knees were very wobbly but it was fun and refreshing.  A nice wrap-up to our stay.

Beaching it at Lake Scott

Cooling down

Lindy gets up on the paddleboard!