Five Mile Beach weekly journal., 1923-04-13

as a rule, write ignorantly, and
speak of the state as a finished
product. Kansas, like Gaul of old, is
divided into three parts, differing as
widely, each from the other, as my
three countries in the same latitude
upon the globe. 1t would be as UNI
true to classify together the Egyptian,
the Indian and the Central American,
as to speak of the Kansas man with
out distinguishing between the eastern
Kansan, the central Kansan, and the
western Kansan. Eastern Kansas is a
finished community like New York
or Pennsylvania. Central Kansas is
finished, but not quite paid for; and
western Kansas, the only place where
there is any suffering from drou~ht or
crop failures, is a new country-old
only in a pluck which is slowly con-
quering the desert.
Aqua Pura was a western Kansas
town, set high up, far out on the
prairie. 1t was founded nine years
ago, at the beginning of the boom, not
by cowbo..s and ruffians, but by hon.
est, ambitious men and women OF
the six men who staked out the town
site, two-Johnson and Barringer-
were Harvard men one, Nichols, was
from Princeton; and the other three,
Bemis, Bradley and Hicks, had come
from inland state universities. When
their wives came West there was a
Vassar reunion, and the first mail that
arrived after the post Office had been
established brought the New York
magazines. The town was like dozens
of others that sprang up far out in the
t%reacherous wilderness in that fresh,
green spring of 1886.
They called 1t Aqua Pura, choosing
q Latin name to proclaim to the world
that it was not a rowdy town. The
new yellow pine of the little village
cleaned in the clear sunlight. 1t could
be seen for miles on a clear, warm day,
as it stood upon a rise of ground and
over in Maize, six miles away, the cleo
trio lights of Aqua 1 IRA, which flashed
out in the evening before the town
was six months old, could be seen dis
tinctly. A ~schoolhouse that cost TWEEN
ty thousand dollars was built before
the town had seen it's first winter; and
the first Christmas ball in Aqua Pura
was held in IN opera house that cost
ten thousand. Money was plentiful
two and three-story buildings rose on
each side of the main street of the
little place. The farmers who had
taken homesteads in the country
around the town had prospered.
Barringer was elected mayor at the
municipal election in the spring of
'S7, and he plated out Barringer's
Addition, and built a house there with
borrowed money in June. There were
two thousand people in Aqua Pura
then.
There was not a lawless element.
There was not a saloon In the town. A
billiard hall, and a dark room, wherein
cards might be played surreptitious-
ly, were the only institutions which
made the people of Aqua Pura blush,
when they took the innumerable
Eastern capitalists over the town
who visited western Kansas that year.
These Capitalists" were entertained
at a three-story brick hotel, equipped
with electricity n modern plumbing
in order to excel Maize, where the no.
tel was an Indifferent frame affair.
This is the story of the rise. Bar
ringer has told 1t a thousand times.
Barringer believed in the town to the
last. When the terrible drought of
1887, with its furnacelike breath singed
tho fOUn Qnd tho fornc in Enrnfoio
county, Barringer led the majority
which proudly claimed that the coun-
try was all right and as chairman of
the board Of county commissioners, he
sent a scathing message to the gov
ernor, refusing aid. Barringer's own
bank loaned money on land, whereon
the crop had failed, to tide the farm
ers over the winter. Barringer's sig
nature guaranteed loans from the East
upon everything negotiable, and Aqua
Pura thrived for a time upon promises.
Here and there, in the spring of 1888,
there was an empty building. One
room of the opera house block was
vacant. Barringer started a man in
business, selling notions, who occupied
Tie TOOul. odITluSer WeHt EdSC dnu
pleaded with the men who had invest
ed IN the town to be easy on their
debtors. Then came the hot winds of
July, blowing out of the southwest,
scorching the grass, shriveling the
grain, and drying up the streams that
had filed in the spring. During the
fall of that year the hotel, which had
been open only in the lower story,
closed. The opera house began to be
used for laid" meetings, and when the
winter wind blew d~ust-blackened snow
through the desolate streets of the
little town, it ratified a hundred win
dows in vacant houses, and sometimes
blew sun-warped boards from the high
sidewalk that led across the gully to
the big red grade of the unfinished
Chicago Air Line"