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Posts Tagged ‘Prophetstown State Park’

Homes, Like Brides, Once Came Mail Order

Posted in Travel, tagged , , , , , , , , on June 2, 2011| 3 Comments »

“Home is the place where it feels right to walk around without shoes.” – Unknown

The Coronado Museum in Liberal Kansas today. It began life as a Sears and Roebuck mail order home. -- Photo by Pat Bean

Travels With Maggie

On my way to Idaho to escape the Texas heat for the summer, I visited the Coronado Museum in Liberal, Kansas. It was so named because Vasquez de Coronado traveled through the area in 1541 in search of the fabled Seven Cities of Gold. He and his band of soldiers left behind a few trinkets, which are now on display at the museum

While the exhibits were interesting, the tidbit that intrigued me was the fact that the 1918 building housing the museum was ordered from a Sears and Roebuck Catalog. The popular mail-order business sold hundreds of these between 1908-1940, offering 150 different models to choose from.

It was the second such building I had encountered in my travels. The first was a historic farm house in Battle Ground, Indiana, adjacent to Prophetstown State Park.

That Indiana home, the Hillrose model, came complete with all electrical and plumbing fixtures, and had been shipped by rail to the site, at a cost of $6,880. For tourist purposes, meaning dollars, that house had been recreated at a cost much exceeding the original.

What got me thinking about these homes were two things. First, the main topic of conversation on my Story Circle Network chat group the past week has been the green benefits of smaller, older homes vs larger, newer ones.

One of the mail order homes offered by Sears and Roebuck between 1908 and 1940. -- Illustration courtesy of Wikipedia

Having once lived in a small home built in 1912 that had thick walls and real wood construction – and low utility bills, I weighed in on the side of smaller and older. While not exactly small, the Kansas mail-order former home and now a museum looked as if it had stood the test of time.

The second thing that got me thinking about Sears and Roebuck homes was a great mystery writer, Blaize Clement, whom I discovered a couple of weeks ago. Her heroine’s grandparents, and now her brother, lived in a Sears Roebuck mail-order home. The fictional home was mentioned in all five of her books, which I gobbled up the past two weeks.

It’s sort of funny how when once you learn something new, you come across it everywhere. It makes you wonder why it’s only now come to your attention.

Has that kind of thing ever happened to you?

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Maggie and I Sit Awhile on Historic Turf

Posted in Nature, Travel, tagged , , , , , , , , on November 24, 2010| Leave a Comment »

Prophetstown State Park in Battle Ground, Indiana, was me and Maggie's peaceful and scenic home for three days. Photo by Pat Bean

 

Travels With Maggie

“We need the tonic of wildness, to wade sometimes in marshes where the bittern and the meadow-hen lurk, and hear the booming of the snipe: to smell the whispering sedge where only some wilder and more solitary fowl builds her nest, and the mink crawls with its belly close to the ground.” — Henry David Thoreau

Prophetstown State Park

This peaceful Indiana park is named for Shawnee Indian leader Tenskwatawa (the Prophet) and his brother, Temcumseh, who established a village here in the early 1800s. Located near where the Walbash and the Tippecanoe rivers join, it was my Indiana home for three days.

Volunteer hosts in my previous campground had recommended it after Maggie, my friendly four-legged traveling companion,  and I stopped to visit with them on one of our morning walks.  I always tell people where I’m headed and ask for recommendations. This had been a great one.

Harrison, on his second attempt to become president, used the slogan “Tippecanoe and Tyler, Too,” and held a huge campaign rally in Battle Ground to implant the idea that he was the man who won the war against the Indians.

Meadow wildflowers, such as these wild geranium, colored me and Maggie's walks. Photo by Pat Bean

 

The ploy was successful and Harrison became this country’s ninth president. Thirty-two days later he died of pneumonia and John Tyler became our 10th president.

As I looked out over the awesome meadow where Mother Nature had woven her magic, I was saddened to think of the blood that had fallen on land that now looked so peaceful.

Not only did the park look out over a breathtaking meadow full of purple, pink and yellow wildflowers, I was sitting on top of history. The park is located in Battle Ground, Indiana, where William Henry Harrison defeated the two Shawnee brothers who had threatened revenge on the settlers for taking their land, hence the town’s name.

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