“Two Rides — Their Contrast,” appeared in the March 20, 1868, Emporia News.

The writer, George T. Anthony, explained that 11 years previous, in 1857, he and others had embarked on an exploration of “Indian country,” south from Lawrence to Fort Scott.

The office of Hovey Lowman and Milton Reynolds, aspiring young newspaper men, served as the staging site for the 1857 excursion. Cotton sacks filled with crackers, cheese, and dried beef were provided for each of the travelers. Reynolds added some “sod corn” from his personal reserve to one of the sacks.

By mid-afternoon, six hale and hearty excursionists boarded a long, narrow, covered wagon. A span of little mules provided the mode of locomotion. New friends were already becoming old friends by western custom. “How quick we seemed

“How quick we seemed to know each other though, by intuition, in those old squatter days.”

The “snail’s path” taken that day lay across an unsettled sea of June grass and roses. Soon they crossed the Santa Fe “road” described by Anthony as nature’s great highway. Not a tree or wayside home presented a feature that could reveal the movement of the long lines of caravans of wagons. Instead, they seemed to stand against the horizon as though a permanent fixture on the landscape.

The first survey stake had not been set for Baldwin City. The town was just days from organization. Not a thought had been formed to establish a university on those hallowed grounds. Methodist ministers would meet the following year to begin Baker University, the first fouryear institution of higher learning in Kansas Territory.

Anthony and his companions bounded on toward the home of “Toy” Jones. Anthony’s misspelling of his first name was understandable. John Tecumseh “Tauy” Jones was interpreter, adviser, and minister to the Ottawa tribe. Anthony called him “king of the reservation.” Tauy Jones’ story is one that will find its way to a future Way West column.

The hospitality of Jones was well-known in those early territorial years. When Anthony and his companions arrived at Tauy Jones’ log cabin, well after dark in the very center of present-day Ottawa, Kan., they found the place crowded with travelers.

The next day the party pressed on, following a little-traveled route that Anthony described as “terra incognita,” or unknown territory. One can only imagine that wagon full of “old friends” bounding over the prairie behind the team of little mules: telling stories and singing songs.

Buoyed by that precious bottle of “old sod,” they eventually arrived at the embryonic town of Fort Scott, the heir of the abandoned military post. There was plenty of room for investment. Anthony could not resist the temptation.

“We might buy if we liked. We ‘liked’ and laid it out.”

“How changed since then.” The wonder of the railroad brought $1 million of investment to Lawrence, now a thriving city of 8,000 citizens. The Eldridge House now stood where the old hotel had been violently rendered to ashes. Mills and factories were “humming their song of labor and thrift.”

The giant windmill on the hill was “thrashing its huge arms against the sky.” The old windmill later burned in 1905.

Anthony’s 1868 exploration, his second ride south of Lawrence, would be taken in a pullman car, pulled not by spirited little mules but by the iron horse of progress. Beneath the rails laid by the Leavenworth, Lawrence, and Galveston Railroad the deserted tracks of Anthony’s covered wagon lay concealed from history. The railroad of 1868 passed farms, gardens, cottages, and trees “charmed into being” all along its southward path. Order and culture were now the “grace and ornament” of Baldwin City. Professor Rice and his assistants administered to 100 students at Baker University’s “home of learning.”

At Ottawa, the travelers found a community “bursting its bonds and swelling to the proportions of a city.” Ottawa University surprised and gladdened Anthony and his friends with “forests” of newly planted trees on 40 acres set aside to show that trees could be successfully grown in Kansas.

The Leavenworth, Lawrence, and Galveston was completed to Ottawa, and that is where Anthony’s second excursion ended. As chief engineer Col. J. B. Vliet swept by Anthony’s car in a cloud of dust and smoke, at 30 miles an hour, Anthony felt a ”rising in heart and eyes,” and George T. Anthony could but think how strangely the ride of 1868 contrasted with the covered wagon ride of 1857. Change was rapidly coming to Kansas, especially along the railroad’s iron path of progress 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.