maps and liniguistics, (now my master cool maps thread)

[nicname]

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[mocat]

Omg

[mocat]

https://twitter.com/MidwestUrbanist/status/1684548783084900356?t=1aEb1AFiTmcDGNSZ-ffgCQ&s=19

[ben ji]

https://twitter.com/MidwestUrbanist/status/1684548783084900356?t=1aEb1AFiTmcDGNSZ-ffgCQ&s=19

[nicname]

https://twitter.com/MidwestUrbanist/status/1684548783084900356?t=1aEb1AFiTmcDGNSZ-ffgCQ&s=19

The grid of all the tiny “center” county seats is adorable. You can pick out every little town in the areas you’re familiar with too.

[michigancat]

https://twitter.com/MidwestUrbanist/status/1684548783084900356?t=1aEb1AFiTmcDGNSZ-ffgCQ&s=19

The grid of all the tiny “center” county seats is adorable. You can pick out every little town in the areas you’re familiar with too.

I was wondering why they are so consistently spaced. Is it based on how much a horse can travel in a day?

[nicname]

https://twitter.com/MidwestUrbanist/status/1684548783084900356?t=1aEb1AFiTmcDGNSZ-ffgCQ&s=19

The grid of all the tiny “center” county seats is adorable. You can pick out every little town in the areas you’re familiar with too.

I was wondering why they are so consistently spaced. Is it based on how much a horse can travel in a day?

I think. Also why we have so many counties, as you prob know. I wonder if horse or person.

[Sandstone Outcropping]

https://twitter.com/MidwestUrbanist/status/1684548783084900356?t=1aEb1AFiTmcDGNSZ-ffgCQ&s=19

The grid of all the tiny “center” county seats is adorable. You can pick out every little town in the areas you’re familiar with too.

That's fascinating. It looks like there are areas of the Flint Hills more devoid of humans than the High Plains. Look at Liberal down there. I think they should just go ahead and merge Elkhart into Liberal.

[mocat]

The grid of all the tiny “center” county seats is adorable. You can pick out every little town in the areas you’re familiar with too.

I was wondering why they are so consistently spaced.

because everyone who established the towns was german

[mocat]

i know that the railroads thought it was a good idea to have a town roughly every 10 miles to be able to service the trains.  you can see some of the railroad routes from this map.

[nicname]

i know that the railroads thought it was a good idea to have a town roughly every 10 miles to be able to service the trains.  you can see some of the railroad routes from this map.

I wish I could time travel and spend a week or two in a train centric Kansas

[Sandstone Outcropping]

i know that the railroads thought it was a good idea to have a town roughly every 10 miles to be able to service the trains.  you can see some of the railroad routes from this map.

I wish I could time travel and spend a week or two in a train centric Kansas

I would love to ride this beast from Manhattan to Kansas City (you have to click thru the length to see the train):

In the lengthening shadows of an October afternoon, UP local 70 pauses at Manhattan, Kansas, to unload express and a few passengers before resuming its journey to Kansas City. Originating in Denver the night before as mixed 370, the train dropped its freight in Ellis, Kansas, leaving a handful of head-end cars and coaches to finish the run behind F7A 1482 and what appears to be an F9mB. The lead unit is formerly EMD 459D, one-fourth of an ABBA demonstrator set that in late 1952 barnstormed C&NW and N&W before being refurbished and sold to UP.

https://railpictures.net/photo/529875/

[mocat]

cool photo! there was apparently no levee back then, must have flooded all the time.

FYI you can currently ride the flint hills nature trail (former railroad) between council grove and osawatomie; there are a bunch of ghost towns that were built solely to service the railroad.

[Sandstone Outcropping]

cool photo! there was apparently no levee back then, must have flooded all the time.

FYI you can currently ride the flint hills nature trail (former railroad) between council grove and osawatomie; there are a bunch of ghost towns that were built solely to service the railroad.

Yes. That trail is part of the former "Pueblo Main" - a mainline of the Missouri Pacific between Kansas City and Pueblo, CO (follows KS-96 in far western KS). There are still a few boxes that housed signaling equipment. I believe the sign for a location known as "Lake" (Lake Siding) is still in place along the trail between Council Grove and Bushong. Several of the locations on this part of the line were given baseball-themed names -- "Comiskey""Bushong". There are a few places out in pastures along the trail where you can seen parts of stone bridges that were used for earlier, less flat/straight alignments of the railroad. Planning to meet up with with a friend for a ride there in a couple of weeks.

[nicname]

Pretty cool time-capsule, especially considering how that area of mhk has changed over the years. It took until seeing the old automobiles for everything to click. Then I saw the people. The train doesn’t even look old at first glance.

I think some of those old train ghost towns are still on google maps. There is a place in Ottawa county my friends and I found looking for fishing spots. There is nothing left there, but what seems to be an old right of way that they built to cross a river or stream.

Google Sumnerville, kansas

[nicname]

Pretty cool time-capsule, especially considering how that area of mhk has changed over the years. It took until seeing the old automobiles for everything to click. Then I saw the people. The train doesn’t even look old at first glance.

I think some of those old train ghost towns are still on google maps. There is a place in Ottawa county my friends and I found looking for fishing spots. There is nothing left there, but what seems to be an old right of way that they built to cross a river or stream.

Google Sumnerville, kansas

Well, I guess the google pin just goes right on the current track. Interestingly enough it’s basically equidistant between Delphos and Minneapolis.

There was an odd thing by one of the rivers/creeks around there, that may have been a right of way at one time tho. Then I think the river maybe shifted or something.


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[nicname]

https://twitter.com/MidwestUrbanist/status/1684548783084900356?t=1aEb1AFiTmcDGNSZ-ffgCQ&s=19

Quoting this cuz thread has been derailed.

[mocat]

 

[Sandstone Outcropping]

Pretty cool time-capsule, especially considering how that area of mhk has changed over the years. It took until seeing the old automobiles for everything to click. Then I saw the people. The train doesn’t even look old at first glance.

I think some of those old train ghost towns are still on google maps. There is a place in Ottawa county my friends and I found looking for fishing spots. There is nothing left there, but what seems to be an old right of way that they built to cross a river or stream.

Google Sumnerville, kansas

Well, I guess the google pin just goes right on the current track. Interestingly enough it’s basically equidistant between Delphos and Minneapolis.

There was an odd thing by one of the rivers/creeks around there, that may have been a right of way at one time tho. Then I think the river maybe shifted or something.


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You can see some old railroad bridge pilings along the blacktop between Wells and Minneapolis from the old line that used to go over to Barnard. The old railroad maps show a location between Minneapolis and Sumnerville station called "Alfmil." Was there an alfalfa plant or some thing at one time? Did you ever eaten salted-in-the shell peanuts at the original Ada Grain location? Ray and Margaret would always have a large burlap sack full of peanuts around the holidays. There was a pop machine in Ada that still dispensed glass bottles of pop back in the early 90s.

[nicname]

I bet Alfmil was it. Prob used hydro power from the river. That’s cool that you can see an old rail line from Wells to about halfway to Minneapolis, going south and west from Wells.

I didn’t ever eat peanuts at Ada Grain, or drink pop there. I remember Ada having a cafe and a few other small businesses when I was prob 5 or 6.

I did work at the co-op/Ada Grain for Ray for a summer before and after harvest, that was the Minneapolis location by the river that got torn down. watched one of the elevators burn down during a baseball game too.

Man, once we could drive we explored a good chunk of rural Ottawa county.

[Rage Against the McKee]

for such an enormous population, the Texas rate is staggering. rattlesnakes? cows?

Stray bullets missing feral pigs.

[star seed 7]

For Ben ji

 

[WillieWatanabe]

You can see some old railroad bridge pilings along the blacktop between Wells and Minneapolis from the old line that used to go over to Barnard. The old railroad maps show a location between Minneapolis and Sumnerville station called "Alfmil." Was there an alfalfa plant or some thing at one time? Did you ever eaten salted-in-the shell peanuts at the original Ada Grain location? Ray and Margaret would always have a large burlap sack full of peanuts around the holidays. There was a pop machine in Ada that still dispensed glass bottles of pop back in the early 90s.

Any of these online and if so could you send a link?

[Sandstone Outcropping]

You can see some old railroad bridge pilings along the blacktop between Wells and Minneapolis from the old line that used to go over to Barnard. The old railroad maps show a location between Minneapolis and Sumnerville station called "Alfmil." Was there an alfalfa plant or some thing at one time? Did you ever eaten salted-in-the shell peanuts at the original Ada Grain location? Ray and Margaret would always have a large burlap sack full of peanuts around the holidays. There was a pop machine in Ada that still dispensed glass bottles of pop back in the early 90s.

Any of these online and if so could you send a link?

Not sure if this is what you have in mind but below is a link to a 1902 Ottawa County plat book from the KS Historical Society. If you search this site, you can find plat maps for most KS counties from various years. This shows where the lines were built with more detail for passing tracks, depots and stockyards inside the various towns. A big red Delorme atlas will show active and abandoned lines relative to contemporary roadways if they were abandoned within the last 30 years or so. There is a company called SPV that prints an atlas that shows all railroad lines ever built but not roads.  Railroads of Ottawa Co were: Union Pacific Plainville Branch which passed thru Culver and Tescott in SW OT Co (abandoned after 1993 floods), Union Pacific Solomon Branch that runs from Solomon to Beloit and is still used by the Kyle Railroad and ATSF Barnard Branch that went from Manchester in Dickinson CO to Barnard in Lincoln County (abandoned in 1980s) and the ATSF line from Strong City KS to Superior, NE that just clips the NE corner of the county (still in use - largely bringing unit trains down from Concordia). Sometimes google maps help, when looking for old railroad features as well

https://www.kansasmemory.org/item/209393/

[Sandstone Outcropping]

From the SPV Comprehensive Railroad Atlas: