Town Historical Tour By Bike

Took a ride around my town which at one time was the “Peach Capital of Kansas”. My neighborhood like many others is built on what used to be peach orchards. I have spent most of my childhood and most of my adult life in this town. Some of what’s below has made national news and other just historical value to me.

It has a really nice bike path that winds all through town with one end of it literally at my driveway. The bridge you see here crosses the Cowskin creek. This is also the park where the Midwest Bicycle Fest is held.

The street that I grew up on. What used to be a empty field at the end is where we made trails and jumps to race our banana seat bikes. My parents still live on this street.

This drive leads down to the old sewer plant and the dump where as a kid I would scavenge for bicycles and parts. I still did as an adult until they locked it up.

What’s left of the old grain elevator. My Grandfather and Father each worked there at some point in their lives.

Our new “historic district”. The old/historic part of town was wiped out by a tornado in 1999. The tornado followed the railroad tracks right through the center of town.
The only thing remaining was the vault from the bank. Replicas of some of the old buildings have since been built. The bank was was built around the original vault. The barn-like building in the foreground is a working blacksmith shop.

The tornado missed our house but destroyed my parents house and my Daughter’s place of employment at the time. My parents rode it out in their crawl space, my daughter in the freezer of the fast food place she worked at.

This building used to be a Sonic Drive-In where as kids we would ride our bikes, park in the stall and have the carhops wait on us. In the background is the church I went to as a child.

Grade school I attended.

Near the main intersection in town. The railroad was recently elevated over the street where as before there was a pretty good hump you had to drive over. This is a small park-like area. Before the 1999 tornado there were buildings here.

This building was a Vickers gas station. The architecture of the building (hyperbolic paraboloid aka “batwing”) was designed by the Vickers Petroleum Company. One of only a couple of these still around. This building survived the tornado while buildings all around it were destroyed.

The “Big Ditch” built in the 50s keeps Wichita and my town from the flooding of the Arkansas river and the Cowskin creek that used to happen prior to it being built. In the background is the Debruce elevator that exploded several years ago. At one time this elevator (then owned by Garvey Grain) was the longest continuous elevator in the world (or something like that). The section right of the head house is different than that on the left as it’s what was rebuilt after the explosion.

The newly remodeled football and track stadium where I (poorly) ran track. In the background the Jr High I attended. What you see of it from this angle is all newer additions that weren’t there when I attended.