Trip to Boise: Lone Jack to Minden

Image via Wikipedia

Entrance to the Harold Warp Pioneer Museum

Yesterday was a little rainy - the coolest day we have seen in quite a while.  We left Lake Paradise Resort in Lone Jack, Missouri, at 11 AM and arrived in Minden, Nebraska, about 6:30 last night.   We came to Minden to visit the
Harold Warp Pioneer Village.  The entrance isn't very impressive, but the place is INCREDIBLE.

Harold Warp was born in a sod house near present-day Minden in 1903, the child of Norwegian immigrants.  He moved to Chicago in 1924 and turned a plastic window material he developed into a fortune. Warp Bros. is still doing business and has a presence on the internet.

When Harold Warp heard that the school he had attended as a child was to be destroyed, he bought it and began creating his Pioneer Village.  There are 25 buildings spread over several acres housing over 50,000 items showing the progress of life in the United States from pioneer days to the present.  Included are a frontier fort/log cabin, a sod house, the schoolhouse mentioned above, a general store, a train depot with two locomotives, a church, a livery stable, a fire house, a land office (the one where Harold's father filed his homesteading claim),  a firehouse, a Pony Express barn, a Pony Express station, a blacksmith shop, and many large warehouse type buildings housing a couple of Conestoga wagons, multiple horseless carriages, over 350 antique cars, several airplanes, hundreds of examples of farm machinery, horseless carriages, and many other thousands of historical items.

We wandered around in the village for about four hours and saw only a fraction of it.  A few of my pictures are included below.  For some better shots, click here.

Missouri Town 1855

It was finally down in the high 80's today, so we set out to visit Missouri Town 1855.  The reconstructed town is located in Fleming Park, a Jackson County Parks and Recreation facility near Lee's Summit, Missouri.  The park also includes two large lakes and a bison herd.

Over 25 antebellum buildings from various locations in Missouri were rescued from destruction, carefully dismantled, and reconstructed on 30 acres in the park.  Most of the buildings are furnished with period pieces.  Interpreters wander the town in period costumes and speak to you in character.  Sheep, chickens, and horses add to the ambiance.

We spent a couple of hours wandering the grounds.  I took about 40 pictures. Several  are included in this slide show.

Independence, Missouri

Pioneer Woman

Yesterday was another scorcher, but we had the wanderlust anyway.  We headed into Independence, Missouri, to visit the National Frontier Trails Museum.  An excellent movie there provided lots of information about how the West moved as the United States grew.  Exhibits depicted the travels of Louis and Clark and the travails of the pioneers that traveled west.  The Pioneer Woman statue is in a courtyard of the museum. She is carrying a pail in her right hand and a baby on her left shoulder

Independence Depot

This completely restored railroad depot stands on the grounds of the museum.

We took the Truman Trolley from the museum parking lot past several historic sites.  You can ride all day, getting off and on at the various stops, for one dollar - probably the best deal in Independence.  We were on the last run of the trolley loop for the day, so we just stayed aboard and listened to our tour guide point out the sites.

Image via Wikipedia

Truman Home

We passed several sites having to do with Harry Truman, including the house he and Bess lived in, the church where they were married, the place he bought gas for his car, and the Truman Library.

A splinter group of Mormons stayed in Independence when the larger group headed to Utah.  A plot of land across the street from their very impressive church is believed by over 2 million people to be the place where Christ will return to earth to call the saints home.  (Sorry - no picture.)

Birthplace of Jesse James

Image via Wikipedia

Riding in the truck is cooler than staying in the trailer, so yesterday we packed a picnic lunch and headed out to explore a bit. Our travels took us to Kearney, Missouri, not far from Kansas City, to visit the farm where the famous outlaw Jesse James was born.

Jesse's family was on the side of the Confederacy in the Civil War.  Jesse's older brother Frank joined a local militia immediately, then later became a member of Quantrill's Raiders.  When Jesse turned 16, he joined Frank in another guerrilla fighting group led by Fletch Taylor.

After the war ended, Jesse and Frank began a life of crime, including the first daylight bank robbery in the United States during peace time. Legend has it that their crime spree was directed at former Union supporters in retribution for the punishment of Confederate sympathizers.

Image via Wikipedia

The farmsite includes the house where Jesse was born and raised, some reconstructed outbuildings, and a museum.  The original part of the house is a log cabin.  It was built around 1820, and is probably one of the oldest homes in the state of Missouri. The James family purchased it in the 1840's. The original farmstead covered about 250 acres.

 

Corner of house with siding removed

 Our tour guide led us through the house, which contains many period pieces, some of which were probably in the home during Jesse's lifetime.  Research has determined that the mantel over the fireplace is one such piece.


I took the picture that shows the corner of the original log cabin wall without its siding. 

Many James family memorabilia, including saddles and guns used by Jesse and Frank James and the boots Jesse was wearing when he was murdered, are housed in a museum on the farm.  A movie tells the story of the farm and the James family.  

When Jesse James was killed, his mother Zerelda had him buried on the property.  After his wife died, his remains were exhumed and buried next to her in a local cemetery.  Once his grave was no longer under the watchful eyes of his mother, souvenir hunters began chipping away the tombstone. What is left of it is on display in the museum.

Zerelda lived on the farm for many years, charging admission and conducting tours of the farm and home.

Trip to Boise: Crossville to Lone Jack

It's been a few days since my last post. We stayed in Crossville, Tennessee, a couple of extra days to be able to attend the funeral of the father of my best friend in Lawrenceville, Georgia - about a 4 hour drive away.

We left Crossville on Tuesday, August 4, and drove through incredible heat. When we stopped at a rest area in Paducah, Kentucky, the temperature was 105 degrees. We drove on another 45 minutes to
Whittington Woods Campground in Whittington, Illinois, and stayed the two hottest contiguous days and nights on record there without satellite reception due to the density of trees in the campground. Had to revert to the antenna for local channels only, but the shade helped.

During our full day in the area, we tried to locate Tom Ryan, a lost friend of Bill's whose last known address as of 1975 was in Benton, Illinois. Benton is a farming community of around 7,000 people a little south of Whittington. The last public hanging in Illinois occurred there in 1928, when Charlie Birger, a Prohibition gangster, was hanged for the murder of Joe Adams, the mayor of the nearby town of West City.

In 1963, George Harrison of the Beatles stayed at his sister's home in Benton while on vacation. The house has become the Hard Day's Night Bed and Breakfast. He also sat in with a local band, "The Four Vests," at the Veterans of Foreign Wars hall in nearby Eldorado, Illinois.

In our search for Tom Ryan, we visited the Benton Chamber of Commerce, then the library, where we went back over old telephone books from the 1970's with no luck. Then we tried driving out to the Walmart off of I-57 where Bill had parked his 18-wheeler and Tom had picked him up by motorcycle in 1975. Bill remembered enough of the route of the motorcycle trip to get us to what he thought was the right area, but either his memory was wrong or the house had been torn down.

We left Whittington for the Lake Paradise RV Resort north of Lone Jack, Missouri, on Thursday, August 5. This is our second Coast-to-Coast campground. The site is on a hill with a great view of one of the many lakes in the campground. Nothing between us and the satellite but empty sky. Our only complaint is that the site is rather steep and rocky, so it took some doing to get the rig level.

We are staying here a total of 12 nights. We plan to poke around the Long Jack area while we are here. If we find anything interesting, I will post.

Related articles by Zemanta

• A Few Facts About the Beatles (psychedelichippiemusic.blogspot.com)

The Cumberland Homesteads and Cumberland Mountain State Park

On Tuesday, July 27, Bill and I set out to explore the area around Crossville, Tennessee.

The Cumberland Homesteads National Historic District is one of the New Deal communities constructed during the Great Depression. Over 2000 families applied for one of the 252 planned homesteads. The winners then had to clear the land and construct the houses. They were paid fifty cents an hour - one third in cash and the rest toward the purchase of their homes.

The homes were constructed with indoor plumbing and wired for electricity, even though they were not connected to the grid until four years later. A hand pump in the kitchen was used to pump water into a reservoir in the attic. The homes are scattered all over the area. Most are easily recognizable, even if modifications have been made. One has been completely restored to its original state with period furnishings and serves as the Homesteads House Museum.

The Homesteads Tower was built in 1937-1938 to be used as the administrative offices of the Cumberland Homesteads. It is a museum today. Visitors can climb the 92 steps to the top of the tower and look down upon the nearby school and other community buildings, still in use.



Cumberland Mountain State Park is located on the Cumberland Plateau just south of Crossville, TN. The land was acquired by the Farm Security Administration in 1938 to provide a recreational area for the Cumberland Homesteaders. The Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC), the Work Projects Administration (WPA) and the American Friends Service Committee (AFSC) participated in the construction of the park. Alvin C. York, the most decorated US military hero of World War I, played by Gary Cooper in the movie "Sergeant York", was in charge of the CCC unit. The dam and bridge comprise the largest masonry structure ever built by the CCC. The park was opened to the public in 1940.

We hiked along the Byrd Creek trail and discovered this "suspended tree".



Crab Orchard stone was used in most of the construction of the homesteads and the park. If you are a Home and Garden channel follower, you probably have heard of it.

Trip to Boise: Gainesville to Crossville

It's been a long time since my last post. The knee surgery and physical therapy finally behind me, we pulled out from LMEA Longhollow Campground in Gainesville, GA, at about 11 AM on Sunday, July 25.

This trip to Boise should take us about a month. I planned the trip to take full advantage of our Coast to Coast campground membership - $10 a night for 7 or 14 days, depending on whether the campground is Classic or Deluxe. We plan to stay in Boise about a month, then head back to Longhollow for a while. Can't beat the camping rates there ($0.00!).

After a beautiful drive up US 127 north of Chattanooga averaging about 8 mpg, we arrived at our first Coast to Coast Classic campground: Breckenridge Lake RV Resort south of Crossville, TN. We will be here seven days. The campground is well-kept and off the beaten path. Our campground hostess is a fountain of knowledge about the area. Our friendly neighbors are an inspiration. He is 88 and she is 93, and they are still out here RVing.

Since this campground has only 30 amp service, we have to watch what we turn on. Switching the hot water heater and refrigerator over to gas only and shutting off everything else allows us to run the washer/dryer and the big air conditioner at the same time without tripping the breaker.

You can see the satellite dish and the cats' "Florida room" in the picture.