GENERAL INTEREST

On the evening of Monday, September 4, 1933, a strange car came into Meade and got stuck on the dirt road just east of the Meade City Park. There were several picnickers nearby from Fowler and the park was full of people picnicking and playing crochet. I will let the following newspaper accounts describe what happened...

On March 27, 2009, we had a blizzard in Meade County... I was trapped in the house and it made me think of a pile of yellow newspapers that J.T. Powell had given to me last fall... newspapers his mother had saved about the blizzard of 1957. Imagine my surprise when I read the date... March 27th! Many of us still remember this "history" and will enjoy revisiting those times.

With the first great wave of settlement by grangers, cattlemen of the Cimarron area found themselves forced to cut their herds to lowest limits in order to find feed on the sparse range along the Beaver River, the Cimarron and their tributaries.

The great storms during the winter of 1885-86 had done their part in cutting down...

I have spent a lot of time researching the Dalton Gang. My initial interest was their connection with their sister, Eva, who used to live in Meade. It is Eva Dalton Whipple’s home that has been preserved as the Dalton Gang Hideout...

When Meade County was first inhabited by European immigrants they had to make adjustments at every turn... few of them would have ever experienced a land such as this. Just the absence of trees was foreign...

In the southern part of Meade, Kansas, four blocks south of highway 54, still stands the two-room house that was first occupied by Mr. and Mrs. J.N. Whipple. Eva Dalton, sister of the infamous outlaws..

When I saw the colorful cover of this soft-cover book on the shelf of a museum book store I was immediately drawn to it. Having roots in Meade County I recognized the name of the Cheyenne chief, Dull Knife..

 Meade has reached the half century mark. As one early settlers of Meade County, I have been asked to write a sketch of those early years when the first homes were being established; something of the problems..

In talking to our friend Paul Brice this week the reporter learned a great deal of his early life that had never been reveled to this newspaper before..

The following excerpt was taken from a manuscript written by George Albert Elmore in the 1950’s. Elmore was born in Morgan County, Indiana, April 30, 1873. He must have had an incredible memory as he recalls his childhood days in graphic detail..

I have had this book on my shelf for quite awhile and was just recently prompted to read it after reading a short mention of it on the Kansas History Online website. The writer captured my attention when he wrote: “Svobida’s book warrants a place alongside..

Crooked Creek comes into Meade County and wanders around for about 270 miles before exiting and emptying into the Cimarron River.  My great-grandfather, John Conrad, was a Meade County Commissioner and when he saw a piece of property..

Fowler Hospital was officially opened Easter Sunday 1946, with Dr J.C. Robb, long time physician in charge. Mrs Linn Frazier donated her home for hospital use. She left the community to make her home elsewhere. The hospital was shut down sometime after 1967, probably '68 or '69..

All my life I had heard the term, “Irish Flats,” describing the area in which my family’s farm was located in Meade County, south and east of Meade State Lake, and just north of the Oklahoma state line. It seem a little odd because I always thought of the people in that area to be (like my grandparents) of..

If one is to believe Jim Herron’s autobiography, he did indeed live a “fantastic life as a cowboy, sheriff, fugitive from the law, hotel and saloon owner, and international cattleman.” He was the first sheriff of Beaver County, Oklahoma, before being convicted of stealing 100 head of cattle in the Oklahoma Panhandle..

I started out to write about the cattle trails through Meade this time, but it seemed like everywhere I looked, I kept running on to Hoodoo Brown, whose story seems to be a history lesson in itself. My research found me at the Meade County Courthouse..

The Jones and Plummer Trail ran from Dodge City, Kansas in the north to the Texas Panhandle in the south. The trail served as a thoroughfare for pioneers and cattle drives but it was created by the freighters who hauled buffalo hides to Dodge City and goods back down..

Standing on the corner of North Fowler and Carthage, the Lakeway Hotel has become a landmark to the people of Meade. It has been a meeting place for many an organization, a stop-over for many a weary traveler, and the hub of a thriving small town.

The year was 1874. Meade County at that time was inhabited only by the buffalo and other wild creatures that roamed the Great Plains. The Indians had been driven from their land by this time and placed on reservations in the Oklahoma Territory.

Harry Chrisman spent most of his career as a reporter for the Southwest Daily Times in Liberal, Kan. He had a passion for the history of what has been termed the “Cimarron Country,” a region that includes southwestern Kansas, southeastern Colorado..

Our search for the aviation history of Meade, Kansas, took us to the Meade Centennial History Book.  The book was published in 1985 and contained a history of the airport written by Richard Batman. We also looked to the back issues...

Research for this article was done by Irene Lemaster whose grandfather, Ernest Fletcher, was very instrumental in the creation of the Meade City Park and built Meade’s first swimming pool.

Gone forever are the one-room country schools that dotted the countryside around Meade County. The buildings may be gone, but one has only to bring the subject up where a group of farmers..

Meade Products Manufacturing Co. was founded on a farm southeast of Meade in 1946, by George A. Isaac, whose first product was a self-propelled riding lawn mower. In 1947, Isaac added all-steel pickup stock racks to his line.

For those of us who have lived in Meade all our lives, the State Lake southwest of town is a fixture. It’s always been part of us and we often take it for granted.

It’s been a century since the first Mennonite settlers arrived in Meade, staking their claim and making a home. After months of deliberation by the “Kleine Gemeinde” church of Jansen..

First is the impression that the Mennonite settlement is very compact, spelling group solidarity. Second, as the visitor becomes acquainted with the people and their homes..

The following story was written by a reporter sent by the New York Sun in 1888 and 1889. It was resented by many of the early settlers as being far-fetched and full of prejudicial..

The best things in life come accidentally, as it were, and by the way. Planned and expected happiness may or may not turn out to be an apple of Sodom, but make yourself beloved..

Since working on the Meade County Performing Arts Council these last couple of years I have become very interested in opera houses, and in particular the opera houses of Meade County.

Somewhere it must be written how Meade got its name, but at this point in time we can only guess at how it came about. Everyone we asked seemed to know that our county (and town) was named for a famous general from the Civil War, but couldn’t tell us much more about the man, so we decided to search him out.

Each wave of occupation of the American frontier developed its own mode of migration and settlement. For the Great Plains one of the serviceable patterns was the mutual aid or cooperative colony. Everett Dick in The Sod-House Frontier, 1854-1890, describes a number of these colonies. 

Childhood memories are significant. The experiences of childhood shape us and influence our life choices. Stories about these childhood experiences, even when somewhat imaginatively enhanced, allow the storyteller to share the sights and sounds of bygone years.

The first known collection of fossils from Meade County dates back to the late 1800's when Orestes St. John took fossils from the Big Springs Ranch.1 St. John was a geologist who participated in Hayden's survey in 1877 and for whom Mount Saint John in the Teton Range was named.2 The present location of St. John's specimens is unknown.3

As I began to think about this story it made me wonder what I might say that would be interesting to people who have been everywhere and seen everything. However I know that if you could see these things through the eyes of a thirteen-year-old boy who hadn't been anywhere nor seen anything, you would be thrilled. Such a boy I was in 1906 when my father..

The salt well is located about two miles south of Meade on land that now belongs to Harold Clay. Dubbed a “natural curiosity,” it just appeared on day in March of 1879. Prof. Johnson of the U.S. Geological Dept. pronounced it a sinkhole, which had penetrated a bed of salt and filled up with water, probably from the sheet water.

It seems that every time I turn around lately I come across the subject of this issue’s history lesson, Francis Marion Steele. I have taken note when I have seen the name because of his connections with the old covered wagon in the courtyard at the Dalton Gang Hideout..

In the early days of discovery, exploration and settlement, three European nations, England, France, and Spain, claimed the territory out of which Meade County was finally carved. Basing its claims upon the explorations of the Cabots and others, in 1606 the English Crown..

At the Meade Historical Society annual banquet in February of 1989, Bill Chalfant, an attorney from Hutchinson, was the speaker for the evening. He told of a book he had written about a famous Indian battle that took place in 1859, on the banks of Crooked Creek just a few short miles north of Meade.