Our Past Is Present February 9, 2018

February 9, 2018

            You are reading “Our Past Is Present” from the Geary County Historical Society.

            Don’t forget to visit the Smithsonian traveling exhibition, “Water/Ways” at our Museum at the corner of Sixth and Adams Streets.  The display will only be with us until February 18^th.  Admission is free and our hours are Tuesdays through Sundays from 1 until 4:00 PM.  While you are there, you will also want to see the exhibit created by our Curator, Heather Hagedorn, titled “Submerged” in Gallery One of our Museum, which chronicles the different floods in Geary County that eventually led to the construction of Milford Dam. 

            Now for today’s story…

            It was February 9, 1859 that the Kansas Territorial Legislature passed a special act making the little settlement that had sprung up on the plains south of Fort Riley the summer before, as a “city of first class”.  Thus, Junction City was born.

            To give our listeners an idea about the type of community that was developing at the forks of the Republican and Smoky Hill Rivers at the time of its incorporation, here is a description of Junction City as recorded in the journal of area pioneer Thomas J. Ingham in the summer of 1859.

            Mr. Ingham wrote: “We entered the broad flats of the Kansas River and followed it down to Ogden.  I doubt whether Ogden will ever become a large place.  From Ogden we went up the river five miles to Fort Riley.  We passed a large unfinished stone house, which had been built upon the government reserve for the capitol when Reeder located it in Pawnee, but now it is put to no use.  I went on the road previously described to Fort Riley, then ferried across the Republican River and went three miles up slightly to Junction City. 

            Junction City is a very new place.  Several “Lager Beer; signs stand out and among the improvements that may be noticed is a ten pin alley and a billiard room.  There is a printing office run by a Boarder Ruffian, another lager beer saloon and a tavern, along with the land office.  I am told the place is unable to support a school.  Junction City is the center of a fine agricultural region though time is not so abundant here as I wish it were.”

            The region was rapidly growing at the time Mr. Ingham recorded these statements in his journal.  We have come a long way since the incorporation of our fair city and look to continue to grow in the years yet to come.

            Well, that’s today’s story from the Geary County Historical Society.