I had told followers of HVB that I was plannning to begin on-location blogs from historical sites. This video is the introduction to a series I will do in Leavenworth, Kansas. Leavenworth is the First City of Kansas, incorporated in 1854, and home to a wide variety of colorful characters from the history of the Old West. The town is more widely known for its prisons, but the town played an important role in the growth of the United States. It is also probably most important for its relationship to Ft. Leavenworth, the oldest military base west of the Mississippi River, home of the Command and General Staff College, founded by William Tecumseh Sherman and the “Intellectual Center of the U.S. Army.”
In this vlog, I am standing in a valley near Five Mile Creek, in Leavenworth. The cars on the road on your right in the video are driving on a modern road that follows the historic Ft. Leavenworth-Ft. Scott Military Road constructed in the nineteenth century. The creek at this point is five miles from the original flagstaff of the old fort and empties into the Missouri river several kilometers to the northeast of where I am standing. In subsequent vlogs I will introduce you to the good, the bad, and the ugly of the early days of a frontier boom town. Here we will meet abolitionists, border ruffians, buffalo soldiers, pony express riders, foreign military officers, psychopathic criminals, and I am saving a surprise in two well-known literati who may have discussed their thoughts about writing and their future dreams over whiskey and cigars in a local saloon. Stay curious!
(By the way, the thumbnail picture is of Fred Harvey, the Ray Kroc of the 19th century, a restauranteur who established “Harvey Houses” at rail stations throughout the country. Maybe you remember Judy Garland, who strarred in the 1946 movie The Harvey Girls? I loved the the Oscar-winning “On the Atchison, Topeka and the Santa Fe,” as Judy belted it out!)
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