Annie Wilson

One That Didn’t Make It The truck pulled hard Across the long stretches of road to town,Muddied from weeks of rain and cold. We passed mile after mileOf wearied cowsAnd

The Little Cowgirl

My image of the typical Kansas settler is a strapping young person, stout and able. I do not picture a 75-year-old. Yet the 1859 Census shows this was the age of Mr. William Campbell when he first arrived to build a home and new life on our ranch.

“When I was fourteen years of age, my father put me out in the Flint Hills in charge of 300 cattle. I lived in a dugout, near a good spring where I got my water. I did my own cooking and stayed there alone at night. I picketed my pony out on the grass with a long rope. At night I listened to the howling of the coyotes. Sometimes I met some Indians going through to Nebraska.”

This evening, I will walk down - from the highest hill at the top of our little “watershed,” following where the water goes, as the earth literally “sheds” the rainwater it does not absorb.

You can find Elsie Bock’s “Savory Meatballs” recipe – our favorite at church dinners (you better get in line early or they’d be gone.) And the legendary “Lemon Snaps” of our long-passed-away Grandma Chloe Wilson, her ingredients immortalized forever in print.

The Stone Wall

Childhood on the Ranch

It didn’t turn Strong City into a sprawling, over-developed National Park gateway city, and it didn’t result in a cascade of government land grabs of nearby ranches. Yet those were the early fears of locals, not entirely unfounded, at the prospect of a “National Park” in their backyard.

Symphony in the Flint Hills Legacy – Part I: The Experience