July 2024

Library benefits all county residents

A public library has long been a staple of our community. The Lakin Library Association was established in 1899, and the first library opened in October of that year. The library was located with the post office in a small building on the west side of Main Street. Librarian Ida Cason placed a large wooden packing case in the room and upon it were placed yellow metal trunks of books that were sent out upon request from the State Traveling Library, each trunk holding 50 books. When all who desired had read the volumes, the trunk would be returned for another.

This “circulating library” was later relocated to at least three different sites when Dr. J.H. Rardon and Roy Menn served stints as librarian. Other locations included a room upstairs in the old Kearny County Bank building at Main and Waterman, the Palace Drug Store in the old courthouse where the fire station now stands, and the drug store located at 109 S. Main that is now home to Duncan Lockers.

The small building in the middle was built to house City Hall in 1917, and in 1923, the Lakin Woman’s Club set up a library in a portion of the building.

In 1923, the Lakin Woman’s Club organized a library in what was then known as the ladies rest room in City Hall at 106 E. Waterman. The meaning of rest room was totally different during that era as the room was used by tourists as a place to rest and by local women for meeting and conducting business. Books were donated as well as purchased from the club treasury but could only be checked out on Saturdays. When Beatrice Darr began serving as clerk of the district court in 1925, she offered to make room in her office in the old courthouse for the Woman’s Club library and to serve as librarian. This made it possible for patrons to check out books every week day.

The library made its move to the current courthouse when it was completed in 1939. Money was made available by the state to assist in operation costs, and Rose Hefner was hired as librarian. In November of 1956, a resolution was passed by voters for the establishment and maintenance of the library. County commissioners appointed the first library board of directors, and the Lakin 50 Club undertook the library as a special project. Elsie Stewart, who had training in library science, was enlisted to direct the project and worked with librarian Hefner to make some changes. It was at this time that the Dewey Decimal and card catalog systems were incorporated into the library.

Lakin 50 Club Members working on the library project in 1958 in the county courthouse. TOP: Seated L-R: Janice Sivils, Norma Hornbaker, and Phyllis Karnes. Standing: Jessie Falconburg.BOTTOM: Standing L-R: Arlene Eveleigh, Ethel Simshauser, Cleone Neff. Seated: Betty Warkentin and Beverly Goss.

The library was located in a small and rather inconvenient room on the top floor of the courthouse. There was a very limited collection of books; but, then too, there was very little space to acquire more. In November of 1964, voters were given the opportunity to cast their ballots for a new and much-needed facility. The proposed library was to be housed in a new addition to the north side of the courthouse that would balance the appearance of the building and blend in with the original structure.

This bond issue was defeated by more than 100 votes. After the failed proposition, the building that now houses Golden Plains Credit Union was rented to house the library and a county museum. A summer reading program was established for children grades 1st through 6th, and preschool story hour was offered. As time passed, many more books were acquired, and more people began to take advantage of the services and activities offered through the library. Eventually, this facility also became insufficient for the size of the community.

Thankfully, in November of 1972, voters recognized the need for an educational and cultural investment in our county. By a 171-vote margin, they approved a $175,000 bond issue to construct the library in its current location. The timing was perfect as the County was under no bonded indebtedness. Construction got underway in 1973, and the Kearny County Library was moved into the new location in August of 1974. An open house was held September 8 that year. The new structure was one of the most colorful and practical library buildings in Western Kansas. Decorated in cheerful oranges, yellows and browns, the library’s new furnishings and decorations were gifts of the Charles and Rhoda Loucks estate. The addition of new departments ensured that the library met the needs of the youngest members of the community as well as the oldest, just as it still does today.

Former library board members H.A. Kersey and Vivian Thomas were instrumental in establishing the library. They joined some of the board members in April of 1974 to inspect the new building. L-R: Cora Holt, Madison Downing, Kersey, Irene Rice, and Thomas.

Marlena Lopez and Johanna Schibbelhut greeted guests at the library open house in September 1974. Schibbelhut was the head librarian and was assisted by Lopez and Norma Hornbaker. Elsie Stewart also spent countless volunteer hours at the library.

Librarian Johanna Schibbelhut stands across the street from Lakin’s new library building in the spring of 1974.

SOURCES: History of Kearny County Vol. II; archives of the Lakin Independent, Investigator and Advocate; and Museum archives.

Big Mac: premier pilot of the 1920s & 30s

When Ira “Big Mac” McConaughey died in 1936, news of the famed flier’s death was carried in major newspapers across the country from New York City to San Francisco. Born at Deerfield to James C. and Emma McConaughey, Ira had made a habit of making headlines.

Ira was in the automobile repair business at Deerfield with Bill Bechtel prior to entering the Navy in 1918. McConaughey served aboard the U.S.S. Cacique, a freighter leased by the United States Navy to transport Allied personnel and cargo to France in support of the European fighting front during World War I. After his honorable discharge in 1919, he returned to Kearny County and once again engaged in the garage business with Bechtel. Their Santa Fe Garage opened in 1920, and in addition to repairing vehicles, the proprietors also sold automobiles, gas, parts, and tires. The business was located on the east side of Deerfield’s Main Street and later became the sight of Santa Fe Motors.

Even before he was a pilot, Ira made the local news for his prowess behind the wheel. In June of 1920, the Advocate reported that he was a speed king, “eating breakfast in Kansas City, dinner in Wichita and supper in Deerfield. What is the need of an airplane, when a Ford makes these things possible?”

But Ira soon caught flying fever. The Angel Flying Circus was the main attraction each day of the 1923 Kearny County Fair, and less than a month later, Ira and Fred Fulton purchased their own plane from Jimmy Angel who taught them how to pilot it. Before long, Ira was performing with the flying circus at fairs and air shows. His name was consistently in the local papers from that time on.

In March of 1924, Ira was piloting when a crippled Angel plane crashed into a willow tree break near Dermott, Arkansas. Ira and passenger “Sailor Jack” Lewis were only injured, but star acrobat Mildred Bennett was killed instantly. Bennett, 18-year-old Hardtner, Kansas native, was the first woman to transfer from one plane to another while in mid-air, a feat she first accomplished at Kearny County’s 1923 fair.

In May of 1924, the Advocate reported that, “Ira McConaughey was here Tuesday visiting his parents and his arrival was out of the ordinary way, having arrived in his air plane, the first bird man ever to visit relatives and friends in Lakin, by this kind of conveyance.”

By July 1924, Ira was at Texarkana, Texas, and in charge of the flying field there. That October, the Advocate carried the news that he had flown from Texarkana to Dayton, OH, in nine hours, “a most remarkable record” for that time.

Before long, McConaughey was making the national papers. In 1928, he won the free-for-all event at the Newton, Kansas air races with an experimental plane developed by Walter H. Beech of Travel Air Manufacturing (later Beechcraft). In 1929, Ira flew the mystery ship to a world’s speed record of 235 miles per hour for land planes. When Big Mac performed at the Kansas City air races in 1929, the Kansas City Star said he “has traveled faster than any man who ever percolated through the upper reaches of the stockyards.” According to the Fort Worth Star-Telegram, Ira’s speed record was not broken until about a month before his death.

McConaughey also worked for Swallow Company, Riesser Company, Travel Air and Universal Airlines, and he was chief pilot and operations manager at Central Airlines where he flew a regular run between Wichita and Tulsa. In 1931, he moved to Dallas and became a pilot for American Airlines.

In September of 1932 when three army airplanes failed to locate a crashed airplane in the Guadalupe Mountains, it was Ira who located the wreckage. McConaughey was dispatched from Dallas to hunt the plane and sighted it; then, he landed at the emergency field and returned to the downed plane in a borrowed automobile. Again, Ira’s name made national news.

Ira died in a Dallas hospital on September 26, 1936, after a brief illness. He was 41 years old and left behind his wife of five years, Mary Francis; his mother, two brothers and two sisters. Ira “Big Mac” McConaughey had logged more than 12,000 hours in the air, or approximately 1,500,000 flying miles.

Ira McConaughey behind the wheel of his jitney in Deerfield about 1918. Other subjects are unknown.

Photo from Wichita Evening Eagle dated Oct. 19, 1928 featuring Ira McConaughey at the controls of the Mystery*S at the Newton Air Races where he won the free-for-all event and also performed for the crowd.

SOURCES: History of Kearny County Vol. II; archives of The Advocate, Wichita Evening Eagle, Wichita Eagle, Sylvia Sun, Kansas City Post, Tulsa Daily World, Atlanta Journal, Washington D.C. Evening Star, New York Daily News, San Francisco Examiner, Fort Worth Star-Telegram, and Dallas Morning Star; Ancestry.Com; Wikipedia; and Museum archives.

Home Sweet Home Kansas

Free and cheap land enticed more than one million people into Kansas by 1890. The Homestead Act allowed settlers to claim 160 acres of public land by paying a small filing fee, building a residence, growing crops and living on the land for five continuous years. Filers could also purchase government-owned land for $1.25 per acre after living on it for six months, building a home and planting crops. The head of the household or any citizen or person intending to become a citizen was eligible to claim land. An 1864 amendment allowed a soldier with two years of service to acquire the land after a one-year residency.

Over 80 million acres of public land were distributed through the Homestead Act by 1900. Under pre-emption law, no more than 160 acres could be obtained by one person, but that changed in 1873 with The Timber Act which allowed homesteaders to get an additional 160 acres if they set aside 40 to grow trees. The intent was to solve the lack of wood on the Great Plains. After planting the trees, the land could only be completely obtained if it was occupied by the same family for at least five years.

Many other settlers came to Kansas by way of Railroad Land Grants or School Land Grants. Desiring a transcontinental railroad, the U.S. Government gave public lands to railroad companies in exchange for building tracks in specific locations. Railroads were then able to sell their excess land to settlers looking for new homes. From the late 18th century through the middle of the 20th century, the federal government granted control of millions of acres of federal land to each state as it entered the Union with the stipulation that proceeds from the sale or lease of the land be used to support various public institutions—most notably, public elementary and secondary schools and universities. Persons over 21 years of age could settle on a quarter section of school land, live on it for six weeks, and pay just $3 per acre. That cost was later lowered to $1.25.

Kearny County experienced its first real surge in land seekers between 1885 and 1888. When settlers arrived here, they found it drastically different from the ‘civilized’ areas they were accustomed to. Survival generally took the physical efforts of every member of a family, and only the most resilient souls succeeded in making their “home sweet home” on the Kansas plains.

As lumber was not readily available, resourceful pioneers turned to the earth to build their homes. Dug-outs were made by digging into a dirt bank, and sod houses were built from the abundant supply of thickly rooted prairie grass. Adobe bricks made of a mixture of mud, sand, clay, and straw or grass were also used. Some settlers were fortunate to have access to limestone to build their abodes, but many “settled” for tents, boxcars, small shacks or shanties.

The late Dave Grusing recalled moving to Kansas in September of 1908 with his parents, John and Anna. “We arrived about midnight in Leoti. Put our dogs and our baggage in the depot, then walked to the Jones Hotel about in the middle of Leoti. Herman and Grace and I walked. Dad carried Helen, and Mom carried Martha. We kids were barefooted and no sidewalks, just a plain path with plenty of stickers.”

The next morning after breakfast, Dave and his father walked downtown and “looked all around and saw nothing but open country. I asked Dad where the town is. Dad said, “You are in it now.” All I knew about a town was Salem (Oregon) and didn’t know what a small town like Leoti was like.”

The family’s first home in Kansas was a two-room sod house that belonged to a man who was away herding sheep. They were told they could stay there until he returned.

“Our new life on the prairie was exciting. The pasture north of this sod house had quite a lot of cow chips so Mom, Herman and I would pick a batch every day. Mom would bake the best of bread.” John Grusing purchased a cow for milk and butter. He also bought a shot gun. “He would shoot rabbits and we would eat them. Mother could make the best brown rabbit gravy to put on our bread.”

Then a man by the name of Krohm told Dave’s father that he was going to relinquish his homestead in the extreme northern part of Kearny County, and John Grusing could file on it. The legal papers went through the Dodge City land office about two weeks later. Krohm sold his belongings to John for $1,200. This consisted of four horses, four cows and calves, three hogs, 40 chickens, a wagon, a spring wagon, harnesses and some farm machinery, a well with a hand pump on it, a two-room sod house, a sod hen house, and a pasture fence.

Twenty years after the land surge, some places in Kansas still hadn’t changed much. Dave wrote, “When we moved onto the homestead, it was about as bare as anything could be – no trees, only three hollyhocks close to the dugout and four cucumber vines.”

Al Gropp’s sodhouse in northwest Kearny County. His son, Ralph, was born here in 1917.

E.D. Wiatt’s three-room combination soddie/dug-out built near Kendall in 1907.

Housing at Deerfield in the early 1900s. Notice the box car home in the background. Subjects are unknown.

SOURCES: Kansas State Historical Society; A Case Study of Kearny County, Kansas in the Populist Era by Harold R. Smith; A Standard History of Kansas and Kansans by William E. Connelley; History of Kearny County Vols. I & II; Hartland Herald and Advocate archives; Wikipedia; Center on Education Policy and Museum archives.

Deerfield State Bank reno a labor of love

A facelift is in the works for the former Deerfield State Bank building located at 602 Main Street in Deerfield, Kansas. Kala Grauberger Fortin, owner of the building, is putting a bakery and coffee shop in the historic structure which was built in 1907.

The charter for the Deerfield State Bank was approved in November 1906 with a starting capital of $10,000. “Deerfield, Kearny county, has been known to fame as a mere railroad station, sort of a jumping off place, but so sudden and great has been the growth of this particular section of western Kansas, under the stimulating influence of the sugar beet industry, that Deerfield is a place of such proportions these days as to warrant the establishment of a bank there,” proclaimed the Garden City Reflector.

The board of directors, composed of A.G. Campbell, R.A. Beckett, Oscar Downing, A.R. Downing and E.R. Thorpe, secured lots 11 and 12 in block 8 and erected a temporary building at the back so that business could commence as soon as possible. The bank opened in the temporary building in February 1907 after a bit of bad luck. “The Deerfield Bank was to have opened for business last week, but when it was ready to be opened, it was found that it had been locked by someone who did not understand the combination, and they had to send for an expert locksmith who could work the combination to open it.”

By late April, work on the permanent brick and stone building was progressing nicely, and the bank moved into the handsome new two-story bank that August. The institution served not only the thriving little burg of Deerfield but also those who lived in the surrounding irrigated country. By the end of the first 10 years, the bank’s assets had reached over $100,000. When most banks had failed or were failing after World War I, the Deerfield State Bank came through the crisis unscathed.

There was, however, some excitement at the bank in August of 1920 when robbers gained entrance to the bank by breaking through the back door and burrowing through the vault wall. The thieves secured about $300 in silver and robbed the safety deposit boxes of about $2,500. The main articles in the safety boxes were bonds which were hard to trace at that time. The steel safe inside the vault was untouched and contained most of the money. “It is said the robbers took a wet towel and wiped every article and piece of furniture they had touched with their hands in order to leave no finger prints for clues.”

There were minor changes in bank personnel and officers through the years, and most of the stock was in Lakin hands by 1935. On April 20 of that year, the Deerfield State Bank merged with the Kearny County Bank, and the assets were moved to Lakin, dealing a severe blow to Deerfield.

In 1946, all of lot 12 and the south six inches of lot 11 were deeded to J.W. Wells, a former mayor of Deerfield, who was an insurance/real estate man. In 1972, the property changed hands from Wells’ daughters to Grant and Lula Meyers, and in 1974, the north 24 ½ feet of lot 11 also became Meyers’ property. That part had been deeded in 1930 to Deerfield’s Emerald Lodge No. 432. Last used as a residence, the bank building was on a decline, but then loving hands came to the rescue.

Fortin purchased the building in May of 2013 from Grant O. Meyers, Jr. She applied to the Kansas Historic Sites Board of Review for nomination to the National Register of Historic Places and was notified in June of 2018 that the Deerfield State Bank building made the National Registry. She then applied for the Kansas Heritage Trust Fund Grant and was awarded $30,360 in 2020 to replace the roof. Unfortunately, the Covid pandemic caused the project’s cost to skyrocket. Kala was left to pay $67,077.60 out of her own pocket.

Fortin said securing grants can be particularly challenging for individuals as many grants are designed to favor organizations, government entities and non-profit groups. Thankfully, Kearny County helped her out. Ralph Goodnight was instrumental in navigating the intricate process of securing the necessary approvals and documentation from Kearny County Commissioners on Fortin’s behalf for the Historic Economic Asset Lifeline and Community Development Block grants from the Kansas Department of Commerce. Kala said, “Ralph’s relentless efforts in finding us a grant administrator were crucial. Securing a competent grant administrator was a challenging and time-consuming task that required extensive knowledge and connections.” The HEAL grant was for $47,580 while the CDBG grant was for nearly $300,000.

Fortin is extremely thankful for the assistance from Goodnight and the commissioners and for all the individuals who wrote community support letters for the grant applications. Local matching funds are needed as well, and she continues to seek additional funding opportunities and accepts donations through GoFundMe at the following link: Historic Renovation – Est. 1906.

“Any support would be greatly appreciated and will go a long way in helping with the renovation project,” she said. “People often ask why I would invest so much time and money into this project. Logically, it might not make sense, except that I believe God placed this calling on my heart. Though these buildings aren’t alive in the traditional sense, I believe they bring life to a community and its people. Every time I’m there, I feel it deeply. This has always been, and will continue to be, a labor of love.”

Kala, a 2001 Deerfield High School grad, lives in North Carolina where her husband is stationed at Fort Bragg/Liberty. Once his contract is complete, they plan to return to Deerfield. Fortin thanks her husband for his support in managing the financials at home and taking on the full responsibility of their household expenses. By doing so, he has allowed her to direct her time, energy and financial resources entirely toward the project.

Kala also says her parents, sister, and brother-in-law have been incredibly supportive throughout the entire process and have played crucial roles in helping with everyday tasks such as maintaining the building. Her children have also been involved, joining her on inspections and walkthroughs as well as construction projects. She has also introduced them to the complexities of grant writing.

“I want my children to understand the importance of saving these historic buildings and the value they bring to the communities they serve.”

Rod Ferking is the contractor who helped to get the project off the ground. The renovation and construction must be completed by April 1, 2026, and the coffee shop/bakery must be open by September 1, 2026 according to grant guidelines. Fortin’s sincere hope is that the space will not just be a coffee shop but a place in the community where friendships flourish and memories are made.

A pre-1911 picture postcard of the Deerfield State Bank.

A current image of the Deerfield State Bank building.

Notice the mail slot on the only remaining original door – the main entrance on the sw corner of the building.

Proposed re -model of the downstairs incorporating the bank’s original vault.

A proposal for the second floor. Fortin said the original staircase is still intact, and many of the ceiling tiles and hardwood flooring remain from when the bank was built in 1907.

Special thanks to Kala Fortin. Other sources include: History of Kearny County Vol. I; archives of the Topeka Daily Capital, Garden City Reflector, The Advocate, Garden City Telegram, Facebook, The Evening Telegram, and Lakin Independent; Kansas State Historical Society, and Museum archives. For more information and to see proposed drawings of the project, check out the Deerfield Ks Town Hall Facebook page.