Our First Stay in Kansas

We stopped for eleven days at another wonderful state park near the city of El Dorado KS.

And we should get pronunciation correct from the start! It is pronounced, by the locals, as El Doraydo!

The city is a surprise to us, larger than we expected with population of about 13,500 and a lot of history.  Nice clean well maintained downtown streets but as is typical of many small towns we visit there are many vacant or shuttered businesses throughout.

El Dorado was at the forefront of oil and gas production in the early 1900s and became Kansas' principle oil hub thereafter.  Railroads had serviced the region since the 1880s and provided convenient transportation for products.

The Butler County Courthouse was built in 1909 and is still in service.

The entrance courtyard features this bronze eagle and is the centerpiece of a Memorial Walk honoring local Veterans of America's wars. Memorial bricks are in the walkways and marble benches donated by families are placed along the walk.

On June 10, 1958 a tornado hit El Dorado and killed 13 residents. A memorial was efected in Graham Park in memory of the event. The central sculpture shown above features a stylized harp at the top. When the wind blows, which is frequently in Kansas, you can hear the strings vibrate a chord from above.

On a drive seeking the county's historic stone bridges, we came across this scene at the Elk River Wind Farm. It consists of 100 turbines, some of which can be seen here, capable of producing 150 megawatts of electricity. We could not see any turbines not turning so they are selling all they produce.

So, on to historic bridges in the county. The Chamber of Commerce pitches a driving tour to each of 10 interesting bridges throught Butler County.  To see all 10 in a day would require a roughly 200 mile roundtrip so we decided to cut it in half and tried to locate six of the ten in a 95 mile trip.  So follow the captions and I will tell you what I know about these bridges.  And there is a bird surprise later in this post you will want to see. 

This and the next picture is of a railroad bridge constructed in 1935 and it features the Art Deco style in the reinforced concrete piers on either side.  On this pier appears the word Frisco which is how the St. Louis- San Francisco Railroad was known and the opposite pier has the word Lines.  Of course grafitti spoils the charm and importance of the structure.

Known as the Satchel Creek Bridge for the stream it traverses is 30 feet wide at the base.  It was built in 1901.

The Ellis Road Bridge is 40 feet wide and was built in 1905. Notice the arched roadway across it! Imagine the labor involved with building any of these structures. And they are still in daily use.

This is known as the Summit Road Bridge.

The State Bird of Oklahoma is the Scissor-tailed Flycatcher but we never saw any in that state. Maybe we were distracted with surgery issues.  We did see numbers of them at Bay Landing in Texas, but were unable to take a picture. So fast forwart to Kansas and what do we see while driving around the countryside looking for bridges?  You guessed it. A Scissor-tailed Flycatcher was perched on a wire fence as we drove by. I stopped to try for an out the window shot while traffic (well four pickups) passed in either direction so I could share with you the photos below. 

Unfortunately neither of these show the remarkable tail of these acrobats which enables them to make sudden rapid turns and dives as they take insects in flight.

Fortunately the State of Oklahoma allows me to use this image from their website to show the cool tail this bird has trailing him!

Unknown Plane parked in Beaumont KS. See Below.

At the end of our Bridge tour we ended up in Beaumont KS which was once a bustling community supported by the aforementioned St. Louis - San Francisco Railroad.  Originally the town was a stagecoach stop on the route between Fredonia and Witchita KS. The Summit Hotel was built in 1879 to provide rooms and meals for stagecoach travelers. In 1885 the Railroad came through and Beaumont really took off. 

Today there is no sign of the roundhouse built by the railroad in 1890 but the wooden water tower built in 1885 still stands and is on the National Register of Historic Places. The hotel is now known as the Beaumont Hotel and caters to tavelers, especially to pilots of small planes who land on a grassy strip across the street from the hotel and either take a meal or stay the night before moving on. Apparently it is not unusual to see planes taxiing down Main Street. 

I have not been able to learn anything about the twin engine plane above which sits in the yard beside the hotel.

Meanwhile back in El Dorado there is sidewalk art on display around the downtown streets. Pictures below are of a few of them.

"Flight" by Jim Brothers

 "Endangered Species: The American Farmer" also by Jim Brothers

The Coutts Museum of Art is located in downtown El Dorado and its collection of over 1500 items includes works of Frederic Remington, Thomas hart Benton and the second largest collection of Prairie Printmakers in the country.

"Tell Me About It" by Frank Jensen

This was taken through the car window while waiting for the traffic light to change. I'll call it "Whopper".

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Tomorrow we will hit the road again stopping at Prairie Band Casino in Mayetta KS for an overnight and dinner at the Casino.