| I made a change in the day's travels
the night before. I ditched going to "ghost towns" because of the
lack of interesting things to see, so I replaced them with another
stop. Headed eastbound on I-70, which is part of the Eisenhower
Interstate System. (Foreshadowing) |
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| Welcome to Abilene, Kansas. Lots of
American flags line the main drag. |
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| Dwight David Eisenhower was born in
Denison, Texas but was raised in Abilene when the family moved two
years later. This was his boyhood home. That's two presidential
homes in one trip. |
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| While I decided to stop in Abilene the
day before, I also learned that everything was still closed due to
COVID. So that meant
I could not go in the home or the museum. Oh well, here's a statue
of the famous general. |
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| Five pylons and a flag. |
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| There's the museum I could not visit.
Appropriately, there is a grain elevator on the other side of a rail
line behind it. |
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| The nearby train station. |
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| City Hall of Overbrook, Kansas. Nothing
much to say about it other than it is in an old building. |
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| The weather had affected my travels in
different ways on the trip. On this day, several of the roads that
Google Maps took me on were flooded, leaving me to search for
alternative routes. |
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| The sign was not kidding. There were
many other roads under water. |
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| But I eventually reached Osawatomie and
the John Brown Museum. When I arrived there was a "Closed" sign on
the door. Fortunately, the guy who was working there just hadn't
flipped it to the "Open" side. |
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| Abolitionist John Brown moved to Kansas
in 1855 during the era of Bleeding Kansas. |
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| Reverend Samuel Adair settled in
Osawatomie and their cabin was a station on the Underground
Railroad. It was also used by John Brown as his headquarters. The
ceiling is quite low. I always assumed John Brown was tall. Either
he was not or he stooped a lot. |
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| Or maybe he stayed up in the attic
space. |
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| The cabin is inside a stone building as
to keep it preserved and protected from the elements. |
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| There's the man. Maybe he wasn't that
tall after all. |
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| The Republican Party of Kansas was
organized in Osawatomie on May 18, 1859. Horace Greele addressed
five thousand people at the Osage Valley Hotel. I assume this was
the hotel, otherwise the sign next to it makes little sense. |
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