Category: Within The Realm

The Octagon City

by Steve Garrett, posted in Within The Realm

Octagon City was an attempt at establishing a vegetarian Utopia on the plains of Kansas in the mid 1850s. The Reformers of the Day were out to change the world through Phrenology, avoiding the evils of liquor, coffee and tea, limiting the spread of slavery and improving their life through a meat-less diet. A little spot on the banks of the Neosho River was chosen. The vegetarian emigrants also believed the Octagon to be the best design for a family home and the entire community was based on that shape. One hundred  brave souls arrived in Kansas in the Spring of 1856 to make their new start, until…

The Indian

by Steve Garrett, posted in Within The Realm

On a hilltop in Kansas stands a weather-beaten monument to the Indian, who at the time of the placement of the statue was becoming a memory of days gone by. The statue continues it’s vigil over the valley below but in the overgrowth of the hill, it is unseen, except for those who know where to look. The Indian, the statue, has a story that mirrors the Indian, the people. 

Dexter, Kansas and the Hindenburg

by Steve Garrett, posted in Within The Realm

Even out here in the windswept section of the place where the Great Plains, the Ozark Mountains and the Indian Territory collide, small, sometimes forgotten things may have a bigger impact than you know. An important discovery near the little burg of Dexter, Kansas, or the lack of that discovery had a big impact on another burg, the Hindenburg which exploded as it was mooring in New Jersey in 1937. That, at the time unprofitable, discovery would have an impact on air travel and the efforts into space.