Last month we took a ghost walk in Wichita. This month we’re visiting ghost towns! Since no one wanted to go to the pool and it was too hot to play disc golf, we plotted our route and headed out. One kid was hanging out with friends, so only our youngest was game for the roadtrip.
First stop: Elmer, KS.
Elmer was plotted in 1875 and while the railroads called the town Elmer, the post office name was Bernal. Some folks tried to drill for oil, but only found salt. So they drilled for oil elsewhere, but stored it in Elmer. It’s rumored that during Prohibition, nearby Hutchinson residents used the Elmer railroad station to receive liquor.
Nest stop Yaggy, KS. Not much to offer here. Everything we read said there were still two huge white plantation homes, but since they are privately owned now they are inaccessible. The Wichita Eagle reported Yaggy was once home to 50,000 apple and a million catalpa trees and was the largest shipping point for fruit between the Missouri River and California. The orchards were lost to a drought in the 1930s, and now are fields of wheat.
We drove through Darlow and saw a few houses, but not much else except for a field of sunflowers. I’m such a sucker for a sunflower field or even just a few sunflowers.
Sego was located near Kingman, in the middle of nowhere. At one point there was a school, church, general store, constable and creamery. In 1910, it had a population of 16. The Sego Cemetery is the only visible proof that there was a town there.
We saw graves of people who had died over 150 year ago. It was super quiet and we didn’t see any cars for several miles after we left.
We finished our tour in Leredo. a long forgotten bustle of activity. We tried to find the old opera house and lodge, but all that’s left is an old church.
The structure is still enact, but deteriorating. The early residents meant to name it Laredo, after the Texas town, but a clerical error inadvertently changed the “a” to and “e.”
Once home, we headed to Riverfront stadium to watch the free community fireworks show. It was our first time at this event, and we arrived early because we thought it would be packed. Nope! We had our selection of seats. The Wind Surge baseball team was in Tulsa, and the game was playing on the scoreboard. One of the boy’s friends joined us.
The show was good and I was glad we took advantage of the free event, event though it was close to 100 degrees!
One Kansas Girl 