Kansas Snapshots by Gloria Freeland - May 2, 2025

Where the camels roam

When husband Art and I travel, a new acquaintance is likely to ask where we are from. Our answer often prompts questions about tornadoes, thanks to "The Wizard of Oz." Sports fans may think of the teams of Kansas State University, Kansas City or University of Kansas. Western movie buffs recall the cattle drives to Abilene and the lawlessness of Dodge City. Many know some of the verses to "Home on the Range," while being unaware of its connection to the Sunflower State.

As a born-and-bred Kansan, my home state is all those things to me, but much more. The rolling limestone hills, numerous cattle and horses scattered across vast prairies, and fields of soybeans, milo and wheat are all part of the landscape that is so familiar to me. Night reveals a pitch-black sky filled with endless stars that touch the heart as much as the eyes.

Folks of a more restless nature searching for stimulation are unlikely to find my home a place that appeals to them. But I love it immensely. Kansas's unchanging nature allows a person to escape the frenetic world.

Still, every now and then, I am reminded this place I know so well and appreciate for its steady nature was once quite different. Kansas is filled with native-limestone buildings. But that stone only forms under water. Dry, dusty Kansas was once a vast sea that stretched from present-day Kansas City to the eastern edge of Utah. A sailor could have navigated from the Gulf of Mexico to the Arctic with a side trip through Hudson Bay without ever setting foot on land. Of course, that was 80 million years ago and there were no sailors, but it's an interesting thought.

Some years ago, we came upon some camels among cattle in a field near here. Camels in Kansas? Imagine my surprise to discover that North America is where camels developed 40 million years ago. The first of many Camelops kansanus fossils was found in Kansas Territory in 1854, seven years before statehood. The camels that roam the Middle East are their descendants, believed to have crossed into Asia by the Bering Strait land bridge, now covered in sea water. It's thought that men moving eastward in this same time period saw the camel as prey, perhaps contributing to their extinction in North America. Some ranchers have reintroduced them as they eat the woody weeds of pasture land without competing with the cattle for forage.

In contrast, our cattle are an invasive species, brought here from Europe. The horse's story is similar to the camel's. They were native to this area, then went extinct, and were later reintroduced by the Spaniards.

Soybeans are native to China and didn't catch on as a Kansas crop until near my birth in the 1950s. It was a similar story for wheat. It arrived in Kansas 150 years ago with the Volga-Germans fleeing what is now Ukraine. My state is now the nation's leading producer.

A K-state agronomist once said that if the state was forced to raise just one crop, milo should be the choice. Used mainly for fodder, our state produces 57 percent of the domestic crop. Yet it is so localized that even farmers from other states have often never heard of it. But it isn't native to Kansas. It came from Africa, apparently brought here aboard slave ships.

Then, last week, I had another eye opener that was 110 years in the making. In 1915, a small circle of land about 100 feet in diameter on what was then the far west edge of Manhattan was donated to the local historical society. Denison Circle was so named to honor Joseph Denison, the first president of Kansas State University.

But it took 17 years to get a memorial erected and it's nothing exciting: three red rocks stacked to form a small pyramid set on a gray flat stone. A bronze plaque informs the curious of its purpose.

An investigation of old newspapers revealed the flat stone had been a part of the Juniata Bridge, believed to be the very first bridge built by the government in Kansas. It provided a convenient way westward-heading settlers could cross the Blue River east of Manhattan.

So what about the red rocks? The October 5, 1932 Mercury only said they came from a "hill near here." But Art was unaware of any large red rock masses nearby from which they may have been secured. Frustrated, he sent a message with a photo to the geology department at K-State. Professor Huan Cui responded:

Thanks for your interest. Great question!

I have not seen that monument in person. But based on your email, I suspect that those granite rocks are glacial erratics. Basically, they are exotic rocks carried to Kansas in a long distance by glacier during an ice age.

Huan sent his own photo of a rock located in front of the county's historical museum. It and the memorial rocks looked the same!

"Glacial erratics?" How did stones from a glacier get to Kansas?

While the obvious answer might be "very slowly," I wasn't aware we had glaciers in Kansas. But just as ignorance of the law doesn't protect a person from prosecution, not being aware that glaciers visited the Sunflower State doesn't mean they hadn't. In fact, they covered about the northeast one-third. They advanced to about the Blue River. The red rocks are almost certainly Sioux quartzite, so named because they began life 300 miles from here near Sioux Falls, South Dakota. Further east, some rocks had traveled from as far as the shores of Lake Superior.

What a sight it must have been, a wall of ice 200 or more feet tall creeping toward Manhattan!

Then, 100,000 years ago or so, the glacier began melting, leaving behind these stone "bread crumbs" as reminders of its travel. Since its jouney ended near where the bridge was built, Art thinks when they picked up the bridge rock, they threw on the wagon a few of the many erratics nearby.

All these things, taken together, mean words like "steady" don't really fit my home as much as I had imagined. Kansas isn’t unchanging. It just changes a bit more slowly than some other places!