The Evening After Fun Day

Upon leaving Glen Elder's Fun Day at around 6:45PM I headed back west on US-Hwy 24. As I drove through the town of Cawker City I spied new initiates at the World's Largest Ball of Sisal Twine and had to stop and say hi. They were from out of state and were thrilled with the opportunity to add some twine to the Ball.


Another interesting Cawker City monument that many people miss is located at the east edge of the Ball of Twine. It is a marker that once denoted the site of the Gledhill Homestead & the Twelve Mile Creek Post Office along the 1870s Cawker City-Smith Center Trail. The marker originally stood approximately ten miles to the northwest of Cawker in Smith County, Kansas. Sometime in the mid-20th Century road work the "temporary removal" of the marker from that original site. For some reason after the work was finished the marker was not put back in place but rather re-erected here in Cawker City.


Driving by the historic Hesperian Library in Cawker City I see that the local goal of $20,000 has been raised toward the renovation of the building, and the final work goes on. Way to go, Cawker!

The old adage To know where you're going, You've got to know where you've been is often more true than most people realize. It's nice to see by this plant stand that the citizens of Cawker City respect their past and their town namesale, Colonel E. Harrison Cawker. Though more respectable plants in the stand might go further to emphasize that point.

Driving on west in the city of Downs stands the Sod & Stubble Monument in their city park. Newly restored, the marker commemorates the local area upon which the classic 1936 novel Sod & Stubble written about.

Then it became time to take off on some good Kansas backroads to my next destination. There's always something to see in rural Kansas!