Barb Wood

The settling of the old west was primarily an east to west movement, with wagon trains, ox carts, and (ultimately) railroads bringing people and their dreams to the new land. But once the newcomers arrived on the central plains, they sometimes needed other lines of travel.

A trip along the history trail that tells of the settling of the west is littered with the remains of hundreds of ghost towns. The lives of many of these settlements were very brief, as they boomed when they bet on the tracks of the railroads and then busted as they watched from a distance as the trains pass them by. One of the largest communities was called Ivanhoe, and was developed between the Arkansas and Cimarron Rivers on what is now U.S. Highway 83. In this episode, we’ll visit what remains of this once-bustling community – the cemetery.