Isaac Werner Visits Cullison, Part 2

James B. Cullison moved on to Oklahoma with his family, but the town named for him began to grow.  (You may visit last week's blog to learn about the young family's arrival on the prairie and the roots of Cullison.)  By 1887, the new town was thriving, and Isaac B. Werner  decided to travel south of his claims in search of markets for his potatoes.  On July 21, 1887 he loaded 4 bushels of a neighbor's corn and 9 bushels of his own potatoes "...and by 2 p.m. got started off & by sun down in Cullison, staied [sic] at feed stable."

When Isaac arose the next morning he left Cullison for "...Spring Valley with my potatoes and sold same to Bridge camp at 87 1/2 cents a bushel."  The camp he mentions was an encampment of rail road workers building a bridge for the rails headed west.  He passed through Cullison on his way home, but the next morning he took a load of potatoes north to St. John.

On July 12, 1887, he decided to travel further south in search of potato markets, and although he passed through Cullison, he continued in the dark to stay with Judge Purdy overnight.  He was headed for Sun City, and "...by 11 got in there, among winding hollows & green trees."  Isaac commented on the corn, only fit for fodder, and the dry crops.  

Isaac's library contained books of all sorts, and his guesses about the terrain he was passing through  suggests his knowledge of geology.  "[C]urious country around there, once a flat country but gullies started and washed by ages & frosts crumpling projecting rock flatten bluff sides down to gentle sloping & now green grass covered."  In Sun City he got a dollar and more for his potatoes and fifty cents for his corn, and with storm clouds coming from the west, he returned to Cullison for the night.

Near the end of August, Isaac made another trip to Cullison, again spending the night in the feed stable.  Given the recent history of severe storms in the Greensburg area, I read this passage written in Isaac's journal on August 30, 1887, with particular interest:  "Trifling shower working from NW against light-sprinkling clouds coming up from S tending to sprinkle from both directions, but the NW movement conquered finally, some lightning & thunder & towards 4 p.m. some of steadiest showering for a good hour's duration seldom witnessed; seemed like 6" of water fell, ground flowing & covered, the upper part of shower going S and lower part blown by on strong wind from S at wind of almost cyclonic for short spell tearing down some buildings and several at Greensburg.  I staied [sic] over night in Metropolitan feed stable, its floor flooded 6".

Despite the conditions and the hard pull for the horses, he went to Greensburg the next morning and "by 4 p.m. soon disposed of my 18 bushel corn at 45 cents and ten and a half bushel potatoes at $1.25," calling Greensburg "a live town, business booming on all sides."  He headed east for 12 miles, spending the night in Haviland to let the roads dry over night for easier travel.

Of particular interest to history is that when he reach Cullison the next morning, the "...Rock Island R.R. track entered town by noon"

Next week I will continue with Isaac's return to Cullison in October. 

What May You Be Missing?

Learning about history is available in places you may overlook.  Sometimes our own hometowns have history to share as we go about our daily tasks, but we are often too busy to notice.  For example, consider the town of Kingman, Kansas.  Most people hurry through Kingman on Highway 54, going someplace else, hardly glancing at the things to be seen from their car windows.  Yet, in Kingman there are outdoor murals, easy to see without leaving your car.  From Highway 54, if you look to the south you can see a beautiful 1888 building with its towers and ornate stone and brick work.  Once it was the firehouse, jail, and city hall, but today it is the Kingman County Historical Museum.

The contents inside are worth a visit, but even without entering the building you can appreciate the history depicted on the north side of the building.  Artist and Kansan Stan Herd was commissioned to create two murals:  a 40' x 20' depiction of Clyde Cessna making his maiden flight in his first airplane, and a 15' x 10' mural depicting William "Cannonball" Greene driving a stagecoach between Kingman and Pratt.  (There is also a 30' long mural inside on the second floor of the museum by D. Stoneberger.)

Clyde Cessna was born on a farm in Kingman County, but he is not famous for that.  Rather, he left the farm and began building airplanes, and he founded the Cessna Aircraft Company whose planes continue to make his name famous.

The name "Cannonball" Green also has notoriety--in fact, in triplicate!  Kingman's visitors' literature identifies the driver in the mural as William "Cannonball" Green, but Greensburg, Kansas to the west claims its town took its name from D. R. "Cannonball" Green, and movies have depicted James "Cannonball" Green.  Chasing down the explanation for the three different "Cannonball Greens" is beyond this blog, but whether it was William, D.R., or James driving the coach, there was a stage line that traveled the route called the "Cannonball" in its day.  The operation of the stage line was cut short by the arrival of the railroads.

What is particularly interesting about the two murals on the north side of the History Museum is the artist that painted them.  While he began as an outdoor mural artist, today Stan Herd is probably best known for his earth-work and crop art.  Sun and weather shorten the lives of outdoor murals, but Herd's current outdoor art has an even shorter life span.  Created from plants and earth, manipulated by the artist through mowing, burning, and plowing, the art is quickly reclaimed by nature.  However, photographs preserve the art in books.

One of Herd's works, which depicted a pastoral Kansas landscape on a large barren lot near an underground railway tunnel in New York City, transformed what had been a trashy site into a work of rural art.  Of particular interest today is the coinsidence that the barren lot on which Herd worked belonged to Donald Trump!  The work was called "Countryside" and filmmaker Chris Ordal created an independent film called "Earthwork," creating a filmed work of art from Herd's creative artistic process.