mileage
701 NEWTON station, 414 N. Main Street. Elevation approximately 1448. This
city was named after Newton, Massachusetts, by railroad investors from that area. “Newton” is probably an Old English condensation
of “New Town,” which was used often in the New England States to name newer communities.
Like Halstead (see MP 691 above). Newton also flourished on the old Turkey Red Wheat strain, which was brought to Kansas by
Russian Mennonites. Newton is now one of the largest Mennonite settlements in North America. At Bethel College, in North
Newton, an annual Mennonite festival is held. The original Turkey Red Wheat is no longer raised, as better blends have since
been patented. Newton is the home of the Kauffman Museum, which depicts the early Mennonite settlements in this part of Kansas.
Surficial geologic deposits around Newton are still primarily sand dune and alluvial deposits.
708 Pass through Walton. The town was named after a Santa Fe stockholder and local businessman.
710 According to AAPG (1986), we are now leaving the area underlain by Quaternary-aged deposits and entering an area underlain by Pennsylvanian
and Permian-aged sedimentary formations, and will be for the remainder of this log. In this area, we are entering the outcrop
area of the Lower Permian Sumner Group, composed primarily of limestones and shales. Between here and Kansas City, we will be
traveling downsection into areas of consecutively older sedimentary formations.
715 Enter MARION
County. This county was named by Samuel N. Wood, a State legislator from Ohio, after Lt. Colonel Francis Marion, the “Swamp
Fox,” of Revolutionary War fame.
718 Peabody. This area was settled by Mennonites, and was
originally named Conesburg, after J.E. Cone of Wisconsin, a settler who helped locate the town site. The name was later changed
to Peabody, to honor F.H. Peabody of Boston, a banker and philanthropist who was also on the Santa Fe Railroad’s Board of Directors.
725 Pass through a small oil field, which produces from Silurian-aged sedimentary rocks.
729-730 Florence. Florence was named
after Florence Crawford, the daughter of Governor Samuel J. Crawford. Florence went on to marry Arthur Capper, who later became
another Kansas Governor. Florence is the home of the Harvey House Museum, which is a restoration of an original Santa Fe Railroad
“Harvey House” restaurant, which was moved from its original location due to flooding. The museum contains historical exhibits,
plus the original Harvey House dishes and furnishings.
731 The Cottonwood River is adjacent to
the railroad on the right (eastbound). The flood plain of the river is composed of Quaternary-aged alluvial deposits, but the
hills on either side are composed of Lower Permian limestones and shales.
734.5 Enter CHASE County. The county
was named after Salmon Portland Chase of Ohio, who later became Chief Justice of the Supreme Court. Chase was known as the “attorney
general for fugitive slaves,” and was a champion of the anti-slavery movement. Chase also helped found the Free-Soil Party in
1848. He was elected to the U.S. Senate in 1848 as a Democrat, but he separated from the party in 1852 when it committed itself
to slavery. He was elected Governor of Ohio in 1855 as a Free-Soiler and in 1857 as a member of the newly formed Republican
Party, which he helped to found. He was also President Abraham Lincoln’s Secretary of the Treasury.
735 South of the railroad (right if eastbound), across the river, is Cedar Point. Lower Permian Sumner and Chase Group formations
are exposed in the area. North of the railroad is an exposure of the Wreford Limestone, the lowermost member of the Chase Group.
737 On the left (eastbound) is another exposure of Lower Permian limestones and shales.
739-740 The rock formations exposed on either
side of the railroad consist of alternating cliffs and flatter areas. The cliffs are composed of Lower Permian limestone beds,
while the more gentle slopes are composed primarily of shales from the Lower Permian Chase Group.
741 Clements. This town was formerly a prominent cattle shipping point. The town was originally called Hunts Station, then
Silver Creek, named by William C. Shaft of Michigan. In 1882, the town was promoted by Joseph L. Crawford, and called Crawfordsville. In 1883, the town was finally renamed Clements in honor of H.G. Clements, an auditor for the Santa Fe Railroad.
748 Elmdale. The town was named after the abundance of elm trees along the Cottonwood River. It was originally named “Middle
Creek.” The stream known as Middle Creek is crossed on the east side of town. It is a tributary of the Cottonwood River.
In this area, there is a geologic structure known as a structural dome. This is a subsurface feature, and not visible on the
ground. Such domes consist of sedimentary rock formations “updomed” into a dome shape. Such features are often, but not
always, good reservoirs for oil and gas. Oil and gas has been explored for in this area, but nothing has been found in the immediate
vicinity.
750.5 Neva, most likely named after the Neva River in Russia.
755 Strong
City. This town was originally named North Cottonwood Falls, after the city of Cottonwood falls to the south, named after the
2-ft falls on the Cottonwood River. The name was then changed to Strong, to honor William Barstow Strong, the President of the
Santa Fe Railway. In 1951, the town was renamed Strong City.
There are good exposures of the Lower Permian Sumner and Chase Groups on either side of the railroad. We are now in the Flint
Hills Region of Kansas, and Strong City is known as the “Heart of the Flint Hills.” A few miles south of Strong City is Cottonwood
Falls, which was founded in the 1850’s as an agricultural and livestock center. Cottonwood Falls is the county seat of Chase
County, and the French Renaissance-style courthouse, built in 1873, was designed by the same person who designed the State Capitol
building in Topeka.
757 Quarries to the north of the railroad (left if eastbound) are cut into
limestones of Lower Permian and Upper Pennsylvanian age.
763 Saffordville. This town was
named after Jacob Safford, who was from Vermont, and served as a Supreme Court justice in Kansas. To the north can be seen shale
ridges with limestone caps, from the Lower Permian Council Groves and Admire Groups.
765 Enter
LYON County. The county was named after General Nathaniel Lyon, of the Kansas army, who was killed in the Civil War. The
county seat of Lyon County is Emporia.
766 Just north of the railroad (left if eastbound) is the
town of Plymouth, most likely named after Plymouth, Massachusetts, by settlers from New England.
769 The gentle slopes to the north (left if eastbound) are composed of shales from the Lower Permian Admire Group. The flood plain
along the Cottonwood River is still underlain by river alluvium of Quaternary age.
771 Merrick
siding. Pass beneath Interstate Highway 35. Merrick was named after an Assistant Freight Manager of the Santa Fe Railroad.
773-775 Pass through Emporia. Emporia was formerly a passenger stop on the route of the Southwest Chief, but the train no longer
stops here. The city is the Lyon County seat, and was founded in 1857 by the Emporia Town Company. Emporia is best known
as the home of journalist William Allen White, the “Sage of Emporia,” who published the Emporia Gazette from 1895 to 1944. In
1922, White’s essay entitles “To An Anxious Friend” won a Pulitzer Prize. White also wrote biographies of Presidents Woodrow
Wilson and Calvin Coolidge. Emporia State University is the home of the William Allen White Library.
Emporia is also the home of the Lyon County Historical Museum, which documents the Pioneer settlement of Kansas.
778.5 Cross the Neosho River. The Neosho rises to the north of here, and is 460 miles long. It flows into the Arkansas River
in Oklahoma. The name Neosho means either “clear water” or “muddy water,” or possibly “river with potholes.”
The bedrock exposed in the banks of the river are Upper Pennsylvanian strata, primarily the Willard Shale in this area. We are
continuing to travel down-section through the relatively flat-bedded Paleozoic sedimentary formations.
789.5 Reading. This town was named after the Reading Iron Works of Pennsylvania, the head of which was John McMann. McMann made the largest
individual purchase of land ever in Kansas in the 1860’s.
790 Enter OSAGE County. The county
was named after the Osage River and Indian tribe. The Osage people became the wealthiest Native American tribe in the country
after oil was discovered on their Midwestern tribal lands.
791.5 Cross the Marais de Cygne River, which flows into
Melvern Lake a short distance southeast of here. Marais de Cygnes is French for “marsh of the swans,” and the river was named
after the multitude of swans which inhabited the area. We are now in the Melvena Wildlife Area.
796 Barclay. The town is surrounded by Upper Pennsylvanian Wabaunsee Group sedimentary rocks.
798 Rocks exposed in this area are the Scranton Shale, Howard Limestone, and Severy Shale, which occur at the bottom of the Upper Pennsylvanian
Wabaunsee Group.
801 Osage City. Like the county, this city was also named after the Indian
tribe. The city is an agricultural and coal mining center.
804 Peterton. We are still
traversing the outcrop area of the Scranton, Howard, and Severy Formation members of the Upper Pennsylvanian Wabaunsee Group.
807 Cross Dragoon Creek. There was formerly a town here named Dragoon, named after a soldier.
809 Burlingame. The city was named after Massachusetts Senator Anson Burlingame, who negotiated the 1868 Burlingame Treaty, which
made China a serious and secure trade partner with the United States. In 1859, Burlingame came to the Topeka area as an Abolitionist. Burlingame, however, was founded by New Yorker Philip C. Schuyler.
In 1863, the women of Burlingame erected a stone fort which defended them from Quantril’s raiders while most of the men from town
were fighting on the Union side of the Civil War. William C. Quantrill was a Confederate Captain, who, along with notorious
outlaw Frank James, raided many towns in Kansas which were sympathetic to the Union cause.
The type locality for the Burlingame Limestone member of the Wabaunsee Group is located just west of the railroad here.
811 The railroad route here is underlain by Willard Shale; however, the bluffs on either side are composed of various limestone and shale
formations from the Wabaunsee Group.
Note the presence of
several coal mine dumps along the railroad. The coal is mined from several Upper Pennsylvanian formations.
815 Scranton. This small coal-mining town was named after Scranton, Pennsylvania, which is also a coal mining town. The coal
in Kansas is bituminous coal derived from relatively thin Pennsylvanian coal beds, which were deposited as part of numerous cyclothems (see
MP 889 below).
818-819 Pass through Carbondale. The town was originally named Fremont, after John Charles Fremont, the
well-known “Pathfinder of the West.” It was later named Carbondale, to reflect its coal industry. The coal in the area,
and the town, were promoted by T.J. Peters of the Santa Fe Railroad, and Carbondale was the first town to supply profitable freight
(coal) to the railroad.
822.5 Enter SHAWNEE County, named after the Shawnee Indians.
823.5 Cross
Wakarusa River. In the banks of the river is the Topeka Limestone, which is the uppermost (youngest) member of the Upper Pennsylvanian
Shawnee Group. The Shawnee Group underlies the Wabaunsee group and the Scranton, Howard, and Severy Formations which we have
been following for several miles now.
824 Wakarusa. The town was founded in 1858 by two men
named Mills and Smith, and was at first named Kingston in honor of Zenas King, one of the parties interested. It is a popular
summer camping place for Topeka residents, and a large camp is maintained throughout the season by the YWCA. The town is a receiving
and shipping point for a large and prosperous farming district.
828 Forbes Field Air Force Base,
named after Major Daniel H. Forbes, Jr., is visible on the right (eastbound). Major Forbes was killed during a test flight. Forbes Field is the home of the Combat Air Museum. The museum features exhibits of 20th century military and other aircraft
from the Spanish American War through the Space Shuttle program, including an EC-121 Super Constellation, F-11F Tiger, J-1 “Jenny”
biplanes, and other aircraft.
829 Pauline. This community is located on the former farm of
W.A. Paul, and was then given a feminine name.
831 Pass beneath Interstate 470. This location
is the approximate southern limit of the great continental ice sheets of the Pleistocene Ice Age. The earliest major ice advance
during the Pleistocene Epoch is known as the Kansan glaciation, so named after the state you are currently in, since eastern Kansas
is one of the very few places in which Kansan-aged glacial deposits are visible and are not covered by later glaciations.
In the Topeka area, being at the southern edge of the glacial deposits, few glacial deposits are visible; therefore we will still
be seeing Upper Pennsylvanian limestones and shales, and are now traveling downsection again, into the outcrop areas of older formations.
833 Passing through Highland Park, a suburban Topeka community. Outcrops visible from the train are limestones and shales of the
Upper Pennsylvanian Shawnee Group, consisting of Topeka Limestone and Calhoun Shale.
835.5 TOPEKA station, 500 S.E.
Holliday Place. Elevation approximately 886. The origin of the name Topeka is uncertain; however, the most common theory
is that it is a corrupted form of the French pomme de terre, which is a potato. It is also thought that the name may have come
from the phrase “To-poo-ka,” which means “a good place to dig potatoes.”
Topeka is the state capital of Kansas. The community was laid out in 1854 near the point where the Santa Fe Trail and Oregon
Trail separated, and the city developed as a division center for the Atchison, Topeka, and Santa Fe Railroad. In 1857, the city
was incorporated, and the first mayor was Cyrus K. Holliday. For several years it was the hub of conflict between the proslavery
and antislavery factions in the Kansas Territory. Topeka incorporated in 1857, became the temporary territorial capital in 1859,
and was selected as the permanent state capital in 1861 when Kansas entered the Union. Topeka is a commercial and manufacturing
center situated in a fertile wheat- and cattle-raising area. Major manufactures include processed food, printed materials, and
rubber and metal products. Government operations, tourism, and the insurance industry are also important to the city’s economy.
Topeka was the setting for the Landmark 1954 case Brown vs. Topeka Board of Education, which paved the way for school desegregation
in the United States.