En route to discover heroes in Freedom’s Frontier.
Dog days of summer envelop us. Luckily this morning turns cloudy and rainy. We quickly get lost, which I enjoy immensely. Cathy not so much.
Just north of the little town of Fair Play I misread the map trying to find 425th Street. Instead we take gravel roads near Jump Off Creek. It reminds me of roving around western Saint Louis County when my teenaged friends and I would get lost out by Wild Horse Creek, get stuck in some farmer’s field then walk to the barn to see if he’d pull us out of a muddy ditch.
“We’re having an adventure,” I exclaim to Cathy enthusiastically, “Just like the old days!”
“I know, that’s why I’m driving so slowly. If we blow a tire on a sharp rock, no one will ever find us.”
Our plan involves driving due north from Springfield 150 miles to Harrisonville, Missouri, where I’m to give a talk on my take on our state’s Natural Heroes. Anticipation fills me with unexpected joy.
Nothing inspires dread, challenge, expectation and hope as much as hitting the highways with a distant goal. I often hate driving because roads have gotten so busy, crazy with folks rushing to buy useless crap or other questionable errands. Two days ago I took time to plan a route to avoid big highways.
It’s not hard. Western Missouri isn’t all that built up. Is it still recovering from the War Between the States, a.k.a. The Civil War?
The National Park Service has designated this region as the Freedom’s Frontier Natural Heritage Area, which includes 12 counties in western Missouri and 29 in eastern Kansas. Fighting began here a decade before the Confederates fired on Fort Sumter in South Carolina to begin serious bloodshed that lasted four years and killed about 1 million people for some purpose school kids still struggle to understand.
Our initial goal: Wah’Kon-Ta Prairie near Eldorado Springs. It’s one of the first and still largest tracts of native grasses protected by the state conservation department. It honors the Osage tribe, who once controlled this area, but sold out to the onslaught of Anglo settlers. Rain keeps us from doing much more than photographing a sign. Same at Taberville Prairie further north. Luckily my research yields a lunch place that’s open.
The Rustic Duck Restaurant near the Appleton City Lake turns out to be a friendly place though some guys at a nearby table question my T-shirt.
“Looks like we’re going to be eating lunch with a Democrat,” one guy comments to his friend, Cathy tells me when I get back from the restroom. I’m proudly wearing a new Harris-Walz shirt that shows a cat and a dog high-fiving.
The t-shirt fits right in with the place’s décor, which features country cute crafts, stuffed animals, plywood cut-outs of fish, grandpa’s old hats, antique reading glasses and a giraffe skin stretched over the bar. Somehow all this stuff creates a friendly atmosphere. No Donald Trump flags wave in the breeze nearby, but a few fly on the main roads.
By the time we reach the outskirts of Harrisonville, the rain stops. We easily find Snowball Hill Prairie, some 70 acres preserved by the Missouri Prairie Foundation. The hill’s so steep it would have been hard to plow. The 22 acres on top have never been disturbed. But today few prairie bunchflowers are blooming, the source of the hill’s name. Luckily rattlesnake-master blooms wave overhead as we walk up the rocky path.
At the historical society in Harrisonville only four locals show up to hear my talk. They prove to be true history buffs interested in everything. They tell Cathy and I to visit Amarugia, a pioneer community once ruled by a locally elected king rather than a mayor. Now, part of these highlands are a state-owned conservation area.
It’s hard to leave the friendly group at Harrisonville. We don’t even take time to visit the Sharp-Hopper Log Cabin next to the library. It’s reportedly one of the few structures left in Cass County that wasn’t burned to the ground during the Civil War. The Union Army eventually issued Order No. 11 to clear rebel sympathizers out of this and other nearby counties.
We rush toward Columbia to see old friends Anne and Robb for the evening. The sun’s at our back. We make good time.
Along the highways most of the corn this summer looks good. It’s mostly still green, but some fields are burned up by August heat. Or torched by Kansas Jayhawkers still angry at local Missouri Bushwhackers.