Fort Larned National Historic Site

The Parade Ground

Fort Larned was built just before the Civil War to protect travelers on the Santa Fe Trail. The fort consists of several buildings (barracks, officer's quarters, supply rooms mostly) arranged around a central parade ground. The fort has no walls, because the Native Americans did not attack en masse, preferring hit and run tactics on vulnerable groups. The number of soldiers at the fort was protection enough. It helps that the fort is protected on three sides by a river, and the fourth has a storage room that is designed to be a strong defensive position with rifle holes to shoot out of. The fort was decommissioned around 1880, and the fort was turned into a ranch.


Graffiti from the 1870's. The walls of the fort contained a lot of graffiti, mostly from the ranch years, but this one, the earliest I saw, was from when it was still a fort.

Full Name: Fort Larned National Historic Site
Location: South Central Kansas, near Larned, KS
Designated: August 1964
When I Visited: June 16, 2008

Brown v. Board of Education

The hallway inside the old school building, exhibits are in the classrooms.

Brown v. Board of Education National Historic Site is located in the former Monroe Elementary School. The park consists mainly of a series of educational exhibits in several different classrooms. The largest room shows a series of videos about several different aspects of segregation. Other exhibits included a fairly typical museum layout about school desegregation, and a room where kids could express their feelings about the Civil Rights movement in a variety of kid friendly artistic media. One thing I felt was missing was a detailed look at the mechanics of the court case.

According to the park's website, they are in talks with other communities that had similar court cases that were bundled into Brown v. Board about commemorating the case in other locations. The other cities are Claymont, Delaware; Washington, DC; Farmville, Virginia; and Clarendon County, South Carolina.



The front door of the old Monroe Elementary School.

Just the Facts:
Full Name: Brown v. Board of Education National Historic Site
Location: Topeka, Kansas
Designated: October 26, 1992
When I Visited: June 16, 2008; day three of my road trip

Abraham Lincoln Boyhood Home NM

A metal replica of the foundation of the Lincoln cabin.

It's time to work on this project in earnest. First up, Abraham Lincoln's Boyhood home. Lincoln has four national parks dedicated to him: his birthplace in Kentucky, his boyhood home in Southern Indiana, his house in Springfield, Illinois, and Ford's Theatre in DC where he was killed. Of course we also have the Lincoln Memorial as part of the National Capital Area parks. Lincoln's family moved from Kentucky to Indiana in 1819, where they set up a small farm. They left Indiana in 1830 and moved to Illinois, where Lincoln began his rise to prominence. So Lincoln spent most of his childhood on this farm. His mother died a few years after the move, and the park contains her grave. Other highlights at the park are a working period farm (nothing was happening while I was there), a metal replica of the foundation of the Lincoln cabin, and a 1940's era visitor center. The visitor center is nice, but I felt it kind of detracted from what could have been a very nice and simple park. As an example, the official logo shows the visitor's center rather than Nancy Hanks' grave, the foundation of the cabin, or something actually related to Abraham Lincoln.


A quote carved into the visitor's center.


Sunrise through the trees. The park contained a short trail from the visitor's center to the grave and on to the farm, which was very beautiful as the sun rose behind the trees.



The grave of Abraham Lincoln's mother, Nancy Hanks. She died from milk sickness, a poisoning passed in the milk of cows that ate poisonous weeds.

Just the Facts:
Full Name: Abraham Lincoln Boyhood Home National Memorial
Location: Southern Indiana, in Lincoln City
Designated: February 1962
When I Visited: June 2008, one of the first stops on my cross-country road trip

Road Trip 2008 Part Deaux

I volunteered to be bumped from my flight, which means I'm coming at you live from the scenic Philadelphia Airport. I had planned to spend the day touristing around DC, so I'm exchanging that for a free ticket anywhere in the lower 48, which means a cheap vacation on one of my many breaks from work. Still no pictures since I don't have the right cable, but I'll round up the National Parks I visited on the second half of my trip.

Florisant Fossil Beds NM: Located in central Colorado, west of Colorado Springs, this was probably the most disappointing park I visited. The park has some gigantic petrified stumps (from old Redwoods). They are huge, which is cool, but they are a lot less colorful than the ones in Petrified Forest NP. Florisant also has some cool fossils on display in the visitor center. What was missing was a chance to see some Thrfossils in the field.

Mesa Verde NP: Located in Southwestern Colorado, this park has great views from the top of the Mesa. I also got to visit some cliff dwellings. They were nice, but not very different than the ones I visited in Arizona last year at Walnut Canyon. The area surrounding the cliff dwellings had interpretive signs describing many of the plants, including what the Natives used them for.

Navajo NM: Located in Northwest Arizona, the park contains cliff dwellings at several different sights. The cliff dwellings at the site I visited are only open to ranger led tours, so I did not get near them, but the view overlooking them is gorgeous, they are located in a simply stunning canyon. The visitor center has locals demonstrating traditional crafts, and some exhibits with a very pro-Hopi anti-Navajo slant.

Pipestem NHP (or Pipespring?): This is an early Mormon settlement located in Northwest Arizona. The site contains a stone fort stocked with period furnishings and out buildings, including a dugout house and wooden corrals. The farm was run as a tithing ranch of the Mormon church. Local ranchers would bring in a tithe of their cattle (and other produce, but mostly cattle in this part of the country), and the ranch would use it to make butter and cheese or ship it to local Mormon towns. The tour of the fort was excellent, as the ranger was very personable.

Zion NP: Located in Soutwestern Utah, this is one of a series of park showcasing gorgeous rock formations created by erosion. Bryce Canyon is the highest, then Zion, and then of course the Grand Canyon contains the lowest geologic layers. You can drive through part of Zion, but to go up in the canyon (created by the Virgin River), you take tour buses. The cliffs are gorgeous, and the river bottom is surprisingly lush (it even has swampy areas). This is a park that you could easily spend multiple days in, especially if you are into hiking.

Lake Mead NRA: Lake Mead is created by the Hoover Dam near Las Vegas. I barely scratched the surface here, only going to the visitor center. The visitor center contains very interesting displays about the natural and human history of the area before and after the construction of the dam. I didn't have time to enjoy any recreational activities, which is too bad because swimming would have been great on a day that hit 110 degrees.

Mojave NP: Absolutely gorgeous. The preserve is located at the confluence of the Sonoran, Mojave and Great Basin Deserts, so you see a variety of desert climates and wildlife. I drove through the park from North (I-15) to South (I-40) and camped in the middle. Beware of very rough dirt roads if you travel this direction. The campsite was incredible. There was one other family there, but otherwise, you're on your own in the middle of the desert. Lots of stars, lots of critters, no people.



That's it for the National Parks, which made up most of my itinerary. After Mojave, I camped on the coast and watched the sun set over over the Pacific, then caught up with some old friends in San Francisco. More details about the parks and the trip shall be forthcoming.

Road Trip 2008

I am in the middle of my road trip to California (from Virginia), with stops at several National Parks on the way. I hoped to upload some pictures, but I forgot to pack the cable to hook my camera to my computer. I'll give a brief overview of the parks, and try to do a longer write-up later (I'm still trying to figure out what I want the write-ups to look like, which explains some of the delay). On to the parks:

Abraham Lincoln Boyhood Home NHP: Located in Southern Indiana, the park contains a memorial building from the 1940's which seems unnecessary, the grave of Lincoln's mother Nancy Hanks Lincoln, and a working replica farm. The graveyard is in a beautiful patch of woods, especially in the morning when the sun is rising. The staff were very accommodating.

George Rogers Clark NHP: Located in Vincennes, Indiana. The park is a memorial to the frontiersmen who fought in the American Revolution. There is a big memorial building, and several graves of Revolutionary soldiers. The park is located at the sight of an American capture of a British fort which helped establish control of the Ohio River Valley during the war.

Ulysses S. Grant NHP: Located in the suburbs of St. Louis, the park contains the home where Grant lived after resigning from the army until ascending to the presidency, with a big break for the war. The house originally belonged to Grant's father-in-law until Grant bought it. The park also has some farmland, but I did not have time to visit it.

Voyagers NHP (aka the Gateway Arch): Very touristy. The view from the arch was nice, but not very different than most observations decks. This would be a great park to come and hang out. Lots of nice grass and nice views of the river. I got a very good look at the flooding of the Mississippi here.

Harry S. Truman NHP: Located in Independence, Missouri (near Kansas City), this park consists of the Truman home and Presidential Library. Like Grant's, the home originally belonged to Truman's father-in-law. Truman lived here from his marriage (1933?) until his death, except when he was serving in Washington. Bess Truman passed recently (1982?), so the house is preserved almost exactly as it was when Truman lived there. The surrounding neighborhood is very nice, and President Truman apparently took walks every day.

Brown v. Board of Education NHP: Addresses the concerns of the Civil Rights Movement very well. The park is a school that has been fitted out with educations exhibits. It has rooms with different themes, and a room where children (and others I suppose) are encouraged to express there thoughts in a variety of mediums. My only critique is that I would have like to have learned more about the mechanics of the court case. This would be a great park for an elementary or middle school field trip.

Tallgrass Prairie National Preserve: Located in Southeastern Kansas in the Flint Hills. This area is poorly suited to farming, so the natural environment has been only minimally disturbed by human occupation. The park has a limestone house and outbuildings from the 1870's, and features several trails for hiking in the prairie. The highlight was definitely the prairie itself. After a short hike (probably a little less than a mile round trip), I had distance myself from most signs of human presence. The solitude was wonderful and the birds and wildflowers were beautiful. This one was well worth the trip.

Fort Larned NHP: A Civil War era fort along the Santa Fe Trail. The fort is in excellent condition, since it was built out of local limestone. The fort was occupied from 1859-1878 (?) and served as protection from the area Native tribes along the Santa Fe trail. The fort had no walls as the Natives rarely attacked in mass, preferring hit-and-run tactics. The walls have graffiti carved in them, some from the the time of the fort's use. After the fort was decommissioned, it was used as a ranch until it became a park.

Nicodemus NHP: Nicodemus is a town in Northwester Kansas that was founded by African-Americans in 1877. The town flourished for several years, despite the challenging climate, but was bypassed by the railroad in the 1890's and withered away. Today it has about 25 residents, but has an annual homecoming in the Summer when former residents and their descendants return to the town.



The road trip continues tomorrow, going diagonally Southwest through Colorado. I am hoping to visit Florisant Fossil Beds NM, Mesa Verde NP, Najavaho NM, Zion NP, Mojave NR and maybe a park or two in San Francisco if I have time.

Actual Progress on the Horizon

The mini road trip didn't happen, largely because of money/gas prices concerns. I am taking a not so mini-road trip in a few weeks. I'm driving a friend of a friend's car out to San Francisco and then flying back. My route goes west from Charlottesville to Kansas City, meanders through Kansas, cuts Southwest past Denver going through Las Vegas, and ends by going up the coast of California. I of course have lots of National Park stops on the agenda, although I'm not going to have much spare time. Hopefully I'll find some time to blog from the road and post some pictures.

Mini Road Trip

I'm toying with the idea of taking a mini road trip that would incorporate the Maggie L. Walker National Historic Site, the Petersburg Battlefield, and the Booker T. Washington National Historical Site. I might just do the last one though. The other two are close enough to do easily in a normal weekend, and so they are less of a priority.