While the Indigenous populations of the plains are the first peoples to live on and migrate across the landscape, the opening of trade with Santa Fe in 1821 marked the beginning of a series of treks across the Kansas plains by a variety of travelers. Those seeking fortune in the gold fields of California or Colorado, or those wanting a better life on their own piece of ground were also joined by immigrants and Civil War veterans who took up land under the provisions of the Homestead Act, and by the cowboys who drove their herds from Texas to Abilene and Dodge City. Many who crossed or stayed in Kansas brought their heritage with them in songs. Sung around campfires, to restless cattle herds, or in one-room schoolhouses, they offer an insight into Kansas history and of the characters and events that shaped the state.

An almost forgotten episode in Kansas history concerns the establishment of a National Forest Reserve in the sand hills south of the R-Kansas (also called the Arkansas) River.

Early-day travelers on the Santa Fe Trail developed a shortened route that took them through the Southwest corner of Kansas. Known as the Cimarron Cutoff, or Dry Route, the sixty-mile stretch between the Arkansas and Cimarron Rivers was a perilous route for men and animals in dry seasons, when wagon trains often ran out of water.

Black Mesa State Park in the Oklahoma Panhandle has been called the geological wonder of North America.

Though the town of Windthorst never really became a reality, the magnificent church that was the centerpiece of an entire community is very real and well worth a trip to Ford County in southwestern Kansas.

In 1928 the commissioners of Kit Carson County, on Colorado’s Central Plains, made a forward-thinking decision that at the time was met with disapproval and dismay by many of their constituents. They purchased a carousel that had operated for many years at Elitch Gardens Amusement Park in Denver.

The first settlers on the Great Plains had little time for fun amidst the hardscrabble toil that made up their daily existence. Yet out of this era came some of our most precious, and now fading, traditions. Box suppers, church socials, spelling bees, and barn dances each held the common essentials of food, music and neighbors that made life on the plains not only bearable, but also downright enjoyable. And of those events, none was more anticipated than the dances.

In the Sherman County Depot Museum in Stratford, Texas there hangs a plaque which honors a citizen who literally ‘went the second mile’ in his attempt to save the lives of a stranded family during the terrible snow storm of February 11 and 12, 1948.

The great trail drives that brought Texas cattle north to Dodge City were generally considered a thing of the past by 1890. But a half century later an event in Dodge City brought world-wide attention to the cowtown once known as “Babylon of the Plains”.

On this Veterans' Day holiday, we remember those who served, as well as their families, who also share in the sacrifice of military service, with this archived conversation from Storycorps' One Small Step project.