The Way West

While the city of Atchison, Kan., was included in the famous “Atchison, Topeka, & Santa Fe Railroad,” construction for the railroad began Oct. 30, 1868, at Topeka.

For more than two years there was no railroad at Atchison. Even so, after six months of construction only seven miles of track had been laid.

When the first locomotive steamed into Emporia on Sept. 14, 1870, attention finally turned to Atchison, but stockholders insisted that track be laid west as fast as possible that they might capture a share of the enormous business the Kansas Pacific was enjoying by shipping the cattle that were coming up the Chisholm Trail. Once that construction was fully underway to reach the cattle trail, a contract to build to Atchison was signed Nov. 29, 1870.

Surveying the route was always the first order of business in physically building a railroad. The route to Atchison, north of Topeka, was surveyed up the little valley of Indian Creek, a small stream that cut its way west of Calhoun Bluff, a ridge that rimmed the Kansas River valley. By early summer, 1871, construction to Atchison had begun.

The survey to Atchison brought to light a man whose presence was virtually unknown to the good citizens of Topeka. The route staked by the railroad surveyors led directly over his Indian Creek dugout home about three and a half miles north of Topeka.

Curiosity brought a reporter from the Topeka Commonwealth to the broken-down door of William Dill, and the unusual story of a man who had withdrawn from the grasp of the modern world, that is, until the world came knocking.

Dill was described as 67 years old with long gray hair. Dressed in ragged pants and “an old shirt which has not been washed for months,” old William Dill presented “a very filthy and lousy” appearance. An old dog was his constant companion.

His neighbors rarely associated with him. Some believed he had money but was too miserly to use it. Others thought he lived in genuine poverty. He talked freely to those who visited him, but was “mum” about his financial circumstances.

A railroad “mess house” was nearby and since the railroad was going to take over his place anyway, he had taken to spending time with the workers. The railroaders dubbed him, “the Robinson Crusoe of Indian Creek.”

The broken-down door of his dugout, or “den” as the editor described it was merely two boards nailed together in the shape of an X.

Squalor and clutter greeted the reporter as he stepped inside the dark hovel. From the center of the leaky roof a box filled with victuals, and a bag of salt, hung by a rope. Several old trunks that looked “as though they might have been with Noah” skirted the fireplace at the back of the room.

The principle diet for this “Robinson Crusoe” was beans and water supplemented with a few vegetables from his meager garden. One cow and two chickens passed in and out of the dugout as freely as the old man.

Dill rarely visited Topeka and when he did he traveled by an isolated foot path that only he used. The reporter ended his exposé with the observation that “William Dill, his den, his stock, and surroundings, are really worth a trip to all.”

The article caught the attention of the editor of the White Cloud Kansas Chief. He ran the story with a follow-up article that could be called “The Rest of the Story.”

William Dill came to White Cloud in the summer of 1860 from Germantown, Ohio.

“He was always a singular sort of man ... his mind was very much unsettled by religious excitement ... and [he] has always had an inclination to wander away from human society.”

When the war broke out in 1861, he enlisted in the Tenth Kansas Volunteer Infantry. During the war he spent some time in Topeka, “... and took a great notion to that country.” Once he had mustered out of service he settled on “probably the same [land] on which he now burrows.”

Family in Ohio had written to him, but the letters were always returned undelivered. No one seemed to know anything about him.“Now the railroad runs through his cavern, and a newspaper reporter dishes him up as a hermit, or a miser.”

“The poor old man ... is far from being in a sound state of mind.” Poverty was most certainly the cause of his circumstances. Whether he was ever reunited with his family is not known. We can only hope that because of the articles in the newspapers the Robinson Crusoe of Indian Creek lived out his final years at ease, far from the privation he had found on The Way West.

“The Cowboy,” Jim Gray is author of the book Desperate Seed: Ellsworth Kansas on the Violent Frontier, Ellsworth, KS. Contact Kansas Cowboy, 220 21st Road, Geneseo, Kan. Phone: (785) 531-2058 or kansascowboy@kans.com.