Kansas History Museum, Topeka

Tall Grass Prarie

If you prefer to see a narrated video of this trip, it is available on youtube.

We traveled out to Russel, Kansas yesterday. Last night we had lightning and thunder from about midnight to 4 AM, but the rain stopped by morning. We headed off to the Kansas History Museum in Topeka, Kansas. We arrived before their 1 PM Sunday opening so I took a few short nature trails around the place. The most interesting was a small section of tall grass prairie, the stuff Kansas was covered with in the 1800s. In order to maintain this patch, they have to do a controlled burn every three years to keep out the invading species. 

Witchita Grass Lodge

The museum told the story of Kansas and from it we came out with a few interesting new insights. First, of all, we learned the Sante Fe Trail was primarily a trading route between the U.S. and what was then Sante Fe in Mexico. The Conestoga wagons weren’t fill with people’s possessions, but with goods destined for Mexico. From Sante Fe, another trail led south all the way to Mexico City. Among the artifacts was a wagon jack, with crank and gears to lift the wagons, and a wagon wheel mechanism to slow the wagon when it was going down-hill. We all remember the Missouri Compromise that preserved the power of the slave states in the senate. States created south of Missouri would be slave, those north would be free. But that ended with Kansas and Nebraska were preparing to join the union, they could choose either to be slave or free. Well, it took 4 state constitutional conventions before there was a Kansas constitution that was agree to both by the citizens of the state and congress (after many violent incidents). And that only happened after several southern states had seceded from the Union.

Comparison of Four Constitutions