The Topeka state journal. [volume] (Topeka, Kansas) 1892-1980, 1904-10-15
KANSAS NEWS.
Good Roads Convention Should
Move West.
Travelling in West Portion of
the State In Slow.
LITTLEWORLD SAND
Wheeled Vehicles and Travel
ers Avoid 1t.
Old Santa Fe Trail Avoided This
Part of Territory.

Santa Fe, Kas., Oct. 15.-South of
the Arkansas river in Kansas, east
ward. on the fifth standard parallel,
from the Colorado border to the inter-
section of the parallel with the river
at ingalls,, stretches a range of sand
dunes They rise suddenly from the
river after the traveller crosses the
Garden City bridge. They are twelve
miles wide opposite Garden City, and
so high that they are called "hilIs'' by
the natives. They are so difficult to
traverse that the road follows a series
of passes" and it is a mornings jour-
ney for team to cross them. South
of this barrier of sand, adding the
distance of a few miles eastward to
Dodge City, lies all of that portion of
Kansas which did not become Ameri-
can territory by the Louisiana pur-
chase Originally it was a part of the
Texas republic, and was only ceded
to the general government because the
Missouri compromise" would not
permit the new state of Texas to be
slave territory north of $3.50 degrees
of latitude.
Five of the counties of this region
are without railroad facilities, and on
account of the narrow desert which
bounds them on the north they are
called the sand hill counties" and
this sand is such great barrier to
wagon transportation that freighters
prefer to haul the longer distance to
the Chicago, Rock Island & Pacific
railroad stations in Seward and Meade.
The five counties so shut out from the
rest of the world are Haskell. Grant,
Stanton, Morton and Stevens. 1t is
probable that only a future good roads
movement and the automobile will
ever make them more accessible. For
no more trunk lines of railroad will
be constructed in that section of the
state, and the country is too sparsely
inhabited to warrant the construction
of branch lines.
The old Santa F'e trail, to avoid these
sand dunes. left the Arkansas river at
old Fort Dodge and traversed the up
land, through what are now the coun-
ties of Gray, Haskell, Stevens and
Morton, following southwesterly
course. Where now the postoff1ce of
zionville is, in Grant county, 1t struck
the Cimarron river and followed that
stream, still southwesterly. to its
source. The old trail of the early
freighters is plainly defined to this
day. Wherever the p1ow has not touch
ed the soil, the ruts made by the heavy
wagons which moved side by side
across the plains in the early civiliza-
ton of the west still are visible, the
ruts and the little ridges between, COW
cred with buffalo grass. To the unini
tiated this is an impossible story, but
it is a fact that the soil of this region,
untouched by pillow, will not wash. The
Santa Fe trail, however, was before
Kansas was Kansas and has nothing
to do with this story.
It is a hard region for political cam
paigners to work in. Candidates for
Office come into it because they owe
that much to the inhabitants, but all
others avoid it. The people are nospi-
table enough, but that amounts to only
an occasional meal, and travel is so lit
tie that the hotels are mere shelters
with the barest comforts of life. But
worse than the rude shelter and the
poor fare are the long drives from
place to place. The climate is bracing
and in the campaign season the days
perfect but it is a freeless plain all the
way, the distances bounded only by the
horizon, without stream or hill to break
the fiat monotony and the traveller
soon wearies Of the scene.