NEODESHA CLASS OF 1965
40th REUNION
October 21 and 22, 2005
I hope you can make the 40th class reunion this October. This date was chosen in an attempt to enjoy weather that will be neither too hot nor too cold for a covered but outdoor setting.
My plan is to start our gathering on the usual Friday evening, but next to a pond I’m re-building at what used to be the home of my grandparents. This is the farm house just south of the intersection of 4th Street and Tank Avenue, which is just east of the tennis courts, which is just east of Swimming Pool Park.
On Saturday at the same location, we’ll be open for business at noon (but come by whenever you like) and then will have a catered barbeque around 5 or 6 p.m., served by Lou, who takes over the Green Lantern Restaurant each evening in Neodesha. The fare will be ribs, chicken and some side dishes, and Lou does a great job. If you visit Neodesha at some other time, you should be pleasantly surprised by his output at the restaurant.
Don’t send me any money at this time, but please let me know if you’re coming, now or at least a week before the event so that I can give Lew some idea of how many are attending.
You can reach me by the following:
Dwyane Hicks
dwyanehicks@hotmail.com (watch the funky spelling)
home: (281)252-6033
cell (in Neodesha): (281)923-2309
or
25319 Bancock Court
Magnolia, TX 77355 (north of Houston)
Another fine restaurant in Neodesha now is Miss Emma’s (named after the owner’s grand daughter), featuring mainly chicken, fried or broiled, and some unusual desserts. It’s located ½ block west of Main and 8th Street, on the north side of Main.
She also serves breakfast, or you can pick up some local gossip with breakfast and talk over the train noise at Carrie’s, Main and 11th Street. (You might remember this being a bar, something that doesn’t exist in Neodesha anymore, for some reason – maybe, the methamphetamines have replaced them. Personally, my favorite was Marie’s, one block south of 4th and Main.)
If you haven’t been back to Neodesha in some time, Tank and 8th Street have been re-paved, a large stadium has been built and BP-Amoco has been sued for a billion dollars, thirty years after the fact.
Deer flourish around Neodesha and often browse between 4th Street and the river. (In 1900 there were ½ million deer in the U.S. Today the estimate is 18 million.) Armadillos have moved north here, with the warmer winter limiting the ground frost which prevents them from grubbing, and ticks are more plentiful. After a bout of Lyme disease, I tape up my jeans when walking in the tall, summer grass; and two other tick-spread diseases are also available.
Though warm enough for armadillos, Kansas is, thankfully, still not warm enough for fire ants, which are now in Oklahoma. Though fire ants are the curse of Texas, they have the side benefit of eating ticks, in some places eliminating them.
Wild turkey were introduced some years ago, east of Neodesha, and I’m told they expand their territory about five miles each year. It’s not uncommon to see a flock of one hundred of them on a hillside or in a crop. I’m told that they make a small but good dinner, but I haven’t yet discovered the joy in sitting in the weeds with a shotgun for hours making turkey noises.
The quail population is reduced–some say due to turkeys eating the eggs, others say, no, it’s the reduced habitat.
I spend a lot of time in Neodesha to work on some farm projects, but I also just like the Neodesha countryside. The following comments concern some aspects you might enjoy, whether or not you attend the reunion.
Kerry also has a complete listing of hotels in the area, including the new Bacani Hotel and restaurant on 400, directly east of Fredonia. (620-378-3339)
You can view Neodesha, and most of America, by satellite picture (zooming in to a 1m resolution), taken in 1991, at http://terraserver-usa.com.
There’s lots of interesting historical reading on the web about Kansas, Wilson County and Neodesha. Check out http://skyways.lib.ks.us/history/ and William G Cutler’s History of the State of Kansas, published in 1883, at http://www.kancoll.org/books/cutler/. Don’t miss the chapter on Wilson County.
Zebulon Pike was passing through Kansas as Lewis and Clark were returning to St. Louis, and you might enjoy his account by clicking the last entry at http://www.americanjourneys.org or by just going to http://www.americanjourneys.org/aj-143/index.asp
It is not well known that Pike, sometimes a predictor of the future, was interviewed prior to his death, fighting in the War of 1812. Tasked to contemplate effects of his exploration, at one point he said, "Where the Verdigris meets another river down there, I think that will be a nice little town. But I’m not sure about this Graham Bailey thing."
With such reading, you can learn such things as:
Osage men were typically over six feet tall. Then why "Little Bear"? His father’s name was Big Bear; so, he was sort of Bear Jr.
First historical mention of Little Bear: on the way to raid the Pawnee. (To this day, most tribes still maintain their rivalries. Some Comanche still talk of removing the "white eyes.")
Little Bear’s Mound: Buried in a sitting position, and, as an honorific, his horse killed and buried with him.
Verdigris River: named thusly by Pike because he observed Indians removing green clay from its banks for painting their faces.
Indian site with Spanish relics: On north 4th Street after crossing the first bridge, a left turn takes one past the old Argo. Where the road makes a ninety degree turn east, a built-up plateau approximately 1/4 mile to the west of this corner was the site of an Osage camp. The excavation yielded Spanish relics of a helmet, musket and musket balls.
Neodesha Lake was approved by the legislature at the same time as Fall River and Toronto Reservoirs, but funding was not provided. The dam would have stretched from the above Osage camp to Little Bear Mound, and the lake would have filled much of the valley from Neodesha to Altoona. (The reservoirs are now largely silted in.)
Fredonia: named after some guy from Fredonia, New York. (The school colors for Fredonia, NY are blue and white--courtesy Phil Griffith.)
Independence: In honor of The Declaration? "No, we’ll not join your settlement at Drum Creek (north of Independence); we will form a new, independent settlement on the Verdigris and name it Independence, just to emphasize that fact."
Yates Center: Yates was the founder, and it’s in the center of the county.
Chanute: Octave Chanute was a civil engineer who built railroads prior to becoming an aviation pioneer who influenced the Wright Brothers. When he decided to route the railroad to Chanute, the towns people renamed the town after him. (Thanks to Roger for this one.)
Fall River: I don’t know. No references that I’ve seen. It falls, I’m sure, but don’t all rivers? Does it have falls? Never heard of any. Does it flow only in the Fall?
All about Buffville, named after the buff color of the bricks, just northeast of where Ronnie Hon lived, about four miles north of Neodesha. (Also had its own school and a segregated Black community.) You can still see the Buffville remains, next to the railroad, on the satellite picture, which include the two quarries dug out for the shale. The gas to fire the bricks was free from the ground, which is one reason for the Buffville location. This gas, in a wide strip from Pittsburg to Oklahoma, is now the reason for a drilling boom in the area.
Toronto: First called Reeves. The 1874 legislature changed it to Revere, which didn’t make Enoch Reeves very happy. Then a group of immigrants showed up from...Toronto, Canada.
Near Drum Creek, a few miles east of Sycamore: the Drum Creek Massacre, where during the Civil War, the Osage chased down Confederates, attempting recruitment, at the Verdigris and finally beheaded all but two, who escaped. (The historical marker is at the bridge east of Independence, but the event was east of Sycamore. Suzanne is the expert on this.)
Sometime after WWII, the train stopped briefly in Neodesha, and a movie actress stepped onto the platform for a break. She was Joan Blondell (Lady Fingers in The Cincinnati Kid), and she said that Neodesha ("How do you say that?") looked like a very nice little town. (What else could a town aspire to?)
Altoona: Probably named after the town in Pennsylvania, and where George Strait is occasionally spotted at the Nut Hut, when hunting at a nearby professional hunting ranch. But Altoona was founded solely to be the mountain oyster capital of the world in the early 19th century, according to Gary Smith.
Briles: name of a beaver trapper, who married Jones, built a cabin at 4th and Tank and then died. Jones married Redington. They moved, by horse, a small store from Verdi, on the Verdigris four miles north of Neodesha, to 4th and Tank and then built a two-story addition onto it in 1894. The Redingtons had a boy, Russell, who had three daughters, one named Virginia, who had a boy, who hosted a reunion at this location in 2005.
If you need less obscure information, about the reunion, contact me at any time. If you’re in a hurry, you might try the cell phone first, as it’s my only link when I’m in Kansas.
Don Hemme is our resident geologist, living in Colorado, and I asked him to write up a summary of the geological "history" of Neodesha. He graciously consented, and I end this announcement of our party with his written gift.
Geology of Neodesha and Vicinity
by Don Hemme
From approximately 325 million years until 286 million years ago (Pennsylvanian Period), the vicinity around Neodesha was repeatedly inundated by shallow warm-water seas. As a result, limestone, sandstone, shale and coal deposits were formed as the seas transgressed and regressed. Off shore, limestone was formed; on shore, on the beach, sandstone was produced; and in shore, coal and shale was laid down, in the backwater, lagoon environment. The dominant ridge of rock that can be traced from Altoona through Neodesha to Independence (including Little Bear’s Mound) existed as a reef during the Pennsylvanian time and is made up of hard bodies of long dead marine creatures, predominately corals. And reefs in the tropics are being manufactured by an identical process today.
Likewise, the hydrocarbons, in the form of crude oil and natural gas, which are abundant in the rocks below Neodesha, were derived from the luxuriant plant and marine animal life, which existed during the time. As they died and as the sediments piled on top of them, their oils and gasses were squeezed out and migrated into porous rocks and structural traps.
In 1860, the first oil well west of the Mississippi encountered oil near Paola, Kansas in Miami County. On or about 1886, a small refinery was established at Paola and 500 barrels of oil was produced in 1889. Norman No. 1, drilled in 1892, was the first well "shot" in Kansas, meaning that explosives were lowered down the hole and detonated in an attempt to fracture the rock in the production zone. It was hoped that by fracturing the rock, production could be increased. The "shot" evidently was successful and the technology was universally adopted. Likewise, the discovery at Neodesha, opened the floodgates and the race was on to discover the numerous world class oil fields throughout Kansas, Oklahoma, and Texas. And today, although total oil production is small, Neodesha is the center of a new boon, coal bed methane production, which as the price of natural gas continues to rise has now become economically viable.
Rocks can be categorized in three general types: sedimentary, igneous, and metamorphic. Sedimentary rocks are derived from fragments and/or mineral grains and are formed under low temperature conditions. The grains are usually cemented together by natural cement, commonly calcium carbonate. All the rocks discussed so far have been sedimentary. On the other hand, both igneous and metamorphic rocks, granite and marble, for example, have been subject to high temperatures and are fused rather than cemented together.
A few miles north of Neodesha along the Wilson-Woodson County line, a rare occurrence of both igneous and metamorphic rocks exists. The site is the only location in Kansas where granitic rocks are known to outcrop at the surface. Two separate but closely spaced volcanic pipes (lamproite) were formed when magma from the upper mantle made its way to the surface.
During the 1870’s would be prospectors, mistaking the mica in the lamproite for silver (and gold) established the town of Silver City and began to mine the "riches." The town virtually died overnight when the truth was discovered. Today, a company, Microlite, based in Chanute, mines the mica for cattle feed supplement because it is rich in magnesium, iron, and potassium.
The lamproite has been dated as mid-Cretaceous, roughly 100 million years old, and is older than the Laramide Orogeny, in which the Rocky Mountains were born. The granite exposed has been dated at about 1,120 million years and since it is much older than the magma, it is assumed that the granite had been ripped loose at depth and rafted to the surface.
In addition, a world class lead-zinc deposit occurs nearby. Roughly centered on Pitcher, Oklahoma, it includes the towns of Galena and Baxter Springs, Kansas. The district, the Tri-State District, lead the world in zinc production for nearly half a century beginning approximately in 1877. And Neodesha played a part in that production. Since natural gas was cheap and abundant, lead and zinc ore from the Tri-State District was shipped to smelters located in Neodesha, one being the Granby Mining and Smelting Company. Ore was heated by natural gas until the sulfides were driven off and the metals melted. But not only did the smelters utilize the cheap natural gas; numerous glass, cement, and brick factories were also established in the area.
Don Hemme 2004
