Is Kansas Flatter than a Pancake?

From the jumping off point in Westport KS, our pioneer ancestors struck across the northeastern section of Kansas, following the Kansas and Little Blue rivers.  Most of the 1849 gold rushers were complete greenhorns, many from East coast cities like Philadelphia and New York, not seasoned frontiersmen.  They were in for a rude awakening.

Modern travelers on President Dwight Eisenhower's famous Interstate 80 which roughly follows the California Oregon trail along the Platte River find the trip boring and flat.  Careening along in a comfy seat, applying no effort whatsoever but a foot to the accelerator pedal, certainly gives one this false impression.   

In fact this has resulted in the American mime that "Kansas is flatter than a pancake."  This theory was "proven" in an article that appeared in the Annals of Improbable Research in 2003.  Scientists measured the topographic flatness of a pancake at 0.957 whereas Kansas was 0.9997 -- considerably flatter.  For full details see: http://www.improbable.com/airchives/paperair/volume9/v9i3/kansas.html.

But, a modern traveler who attempts to see the road through pioneer eyes, will quickly learn that northeast Kansas, at any rate, is anything but flat.  From Westport to the area near present day Topeka the emigrant's trail was a continuous series of steep hillocks -- glacial mounds created in the Pleistocene era 600,000 years ago.  Not so boring and flat if you're walking.  Not so boring and flat if you're helping push a 1,500 lbs. wagon up one of these glacial mounds.  Not so boring if you're helping to brake a 1,500 lbs. wagon on the downhill side.

Diorama, Archway, Kearney NE

By the time you reach Topeka some 70 miles from Westport, the glacial mounds give way to rolling hills.  The "trail" along this stretch, now Highway 99, brings to mind the long rippling ribbon used by Olympic gymnasts.  But "the ribbon" seems an endless....

Most emigrants walked, and this was tall grass prairie.  True, the thick grasses were just coming up in spring -- but last year's crop of hard, dry stems, as tall as the emigrants themselves, was still standing.  In essence emigrants wadded through scratchy thickets on uneven ground full of gopher holes and prairie dog colonies.  No wonder the women quickly abandoned their fine dresses and long skirts for bloomers.

Field of Dreams, or walking through the tall grass prairie

A last thought.  In February 1963 President Kennedy issued a challenge to the US Marines and all Americans to demonstrate that the nation was still fit -- a 50-mile walk in a single day.  Apparently Kennedy had found an 1908 memo from Teddy Roosevelt that said that all Marines should be able to hike 50 miles in three days.  Kennedy agreed and upped the ante.  RFK took his brother up on it, completing the hike on a snowy day -- and in Oxford loafers no less.  As a kid I remember seeing a young man with backpack and a handwritten sign "50 miles or bust" trudging along El Camino Real in Mountain View.   Even then I was, in some vague way, proud and in awe of him. 

Okay, the trip along the California Oregon trail is 2,000 miles long and took my ancestors four months to complete (May 6 departure from Westport KS; Sept 9 arrival in Chico CA) -- 125 days.  So, to reach California or Oregon before snow flies in the Cascades and Sierras, you had to walk an average of 16 miles per day (50  miles would take 3.125 days).   This does not take into account pushing wagons up and down hills or sleeping rough every night or crossing deserts without water.  So, the emigrants that made it --> tougher than the Marines!  

Sandy, Julie:  You would have made it.  On the other hand, it's a good thing that I was born in California.