Most people come to Hutchinson, KS to visit its world-class museums – Kansas Cosmosphere and the Kansas Underground Salt Museum. Only few visit prairie dogs. Even fewer do all three. We were in the smallest of minorities who did all that and had a dinner at the Dutch Kitchen restaurant.

Note to a future visitor: Visiting the Salt Museum takes about 2 hours, while the Cosmosphere can keep you busy all day. Plan accordingly and attend the latter when you have plenty of time.

Given Hutchinson’s salt-mining roots and multiple working and abandoned mines in the area, it’ no surprise that one of the biggest museums of that kind in the world is located there.

Although numerous old people are seen approaching the building with the sign “Underground Bound”, it’s not an old people recycling facility. Many of them actually make it back to the top.

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Hit it!

These are some of the Kansas delegates to the Republican National Convention in 1948.

I found the Platform pretty interesting in terms of which party could claim the same items today:

• Reduction of the public debt
• Federal aid to states for slum clearance and low-cost housing
• Extension of Social Security benefits
• A federal anti-lynching law
• Federal civil rights legislation
• Abolition of the poll tax
• A crackdown on domestic Communism
• Recognition of the state of Israel
• International arms control “on basis of reliable disciplines against bad faith”.

Mayor Cleaver?

More photos.

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On October 25,1954 Life magazine wrote about the installation of the Hereford Sculpture in Kansas City.

A trailer truck rode through Kansas City, Mo. last week bearing a bull destined to achieve great heights. The bull, a Hereford from New Jersey, stands 12 feet high, weighs 5,550 pounds and has plastic flesh atop steel bones. It was designed to stand atop a 90-foot pylon in front of American Hereford Association headquarters near the stockyards. First the association mock-solemnly debated whether the model would present its white fore or its ample rear to nearby Kansas City, Kan, Then the great model was ceremoniously hoisted to its strictly neutral north-south position where, illuminated from within by intestinal neon tubing, it will doubtless provoke countless cornfed jokes about beef being still high.

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…although I don’t know if Charlie Getty actually prayed on the field. Probably not.

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Previously: Old Photos:Santa Claus School

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