Big Wells, Crystal City and La Pryor, Texas

First timer?  In this formerly once-a-day blog (and now pretty much a once-a-week blog), I use an app that provides a random latitude and longitude that puts me somewhere in the continental United States (the lower 48).  I call this “landing.”

I keep track of the watersheds I land in, as well as the town or towns I land near.  I do some internet research to hopefully find something of interest about my landing location. 

To find out more about A Landing A Day (like who “Dan” is) please see “About Landing” above.  To check out some relatively recent changes in how I do things, check out “About Landing (Revisited).”

Landing number 2535; A Landing A Day blog post number 980

Dan:  Today’s lat/long (N28^o 48.818’, W99^o 29.733) puts me in south central Texas:

Here’s my local landing map:

I know, I know – I usually highlight my titular towns on my local landing map. Well, you’ll just have to find them yourselves . . .

Let’s move over to Google Earth (GE) to get a look at my landing.  The Orange Dude couldn’t get as close as he’d like:

Here’s what he sees:

He couldn’t help but notice that he landed in a huge oil field:

Here’s a close-up of the circled white rectangles:

And closer still:

Yup.  No question.  It’s an oil field.  We’re looking straight down at a pump jack which is casting a wonderful shadow!

 Let’s zoom back, and label some waterways:

I landed in the watershed of the Leona River (2^nd hit), on to the Frio R (5^th hit, making the Frio the 176^th river on my list of rivers with 5 or more hits).

Zooming way back (and moving over to StreetAtlas):

The Frio runs parallel to, but eventually discharges into the Nueces, which flows into Corpus Christi Bay. 

JFTHOI* I’ll personify the Frio River: “It’s so not fair! Two sizable rivers come together, and they (the river-namers) could have decided that the Nueces flowed into the Frio, and the Frio was the river that went to Corpus Christi. But noooo. And my name is so much easier to pronounce!.

*Just for the heck of it.

I sent the Orange Dude a little east of my landing to get a look at the Leona River: 

Here’s the I-can-always-count-on-the-Texas-DOT sign:

But trying to see the Leona River itself?  Not really:

I think I’ll start with Big Wells.  Let’s guess how the town got its name:

• The Wells brothers were early settlers.  The older one was wealthier and more important than the younger – not to mention he was much larger.  They wanted to name the town “Wells,” but the older brother insisted on a way to differentiate the brothers.
• Some wildcat oil wells were huge producers; or
• Water wells were huge producers

Even though the third bullet seems like a weak third, that’s the correct answer!  From TexasEscapes.com:

The name doesn’t seem to have been an exaggeration when the town was founded. It was named for the artesian wells that once (allegedly) jetted 30 feet into the air. Naturally with this abundance of water – it was a prime location for land developers. There were several development projects in Dimmit County (including Big Wells) between 1909 and 1917.

The artesian wells that gave the town its name have required pumps to produce water since the mid-1940s.

As a geologist who specialized in groundwater (more technically known as a hydrogeologist), I’m fully aware of what’s going on in an artesian aquifer.  Class, may I please draw your attention to this figure:

The tan-colored unit is sandy – i.e., water can flow through this unit fairly easily.  This kind of unit is called an aquifer.  The gray units – labeled “confining bed” are clay beds.  Obviously, water cannot flow through the clay.

The little horizontal lines in the well casings signify the “well screen,” which is simply where slots in the casing allow water to flow into the well.

The little triangles signify the “water table.”  If one digs a deep hole, the water table is the depth where water starts to flow into the hole.

An “unconfined aquifer” is where the aquifer actually contains the water table.  A “confined aquifer” is a sand unit that has a confining bed above it.  A confined aquifer does not contain the water table.

The dashed line is labeled “potentiometric surface” which sounds complicated but really isn’t.  In an unconfined aquifer, the potentiometric surface is the same as the water table.  In a confined aquifer, it’s the level that the water in a confined aquifer would rise to in a well that’s screened in the confined aquifer.

The “Recharge Area” is where infiltrating rain water can actually find its way into the confined aquifer – where the sand unit is located at the land surface.  See the water table at the recharge area?  That’s the beginning of the potentiometric surface for the confined aquifer. 

So as we go to the right, the first well we run into is labeled “Flowing Artesian Well.”  It’s flowing because the potentiometric surface for the confined aquifer is actually above the land surface.  This is like the original wells in Big Wells.  If the casing extended up above the land surface, the water in the well casing would be at the potentiometric surface.

You can see the “water table well,” which by now should be self-explanatory.  You can also see the “artesian well.”  It’s called “artesian” because the water level rises above the confining unit.  It’s not “flowing” because the land surface is higher here.

As is my wont, I’ll guess as to my readership’s possible responses to this geology lesson. Here are my response categories:

1. Blurred over right away, started skimming.
2. Gave it the old college try, but really didn’t care enough to pay close attention.
3. Spent some time on it, but wished you didn’t.
4. Spent some time on it, and are glad you did.
5. Took one look at the figure, and knew right away how the entire system functioned.

Sorry class, I’m not done yet. I checked out the area around Big Wells, looking for the recharge area, which must be at a higher elevation than the land around Big Wells.  Here’s what I found:

I don’t know for a fact that the recharge area is the area just south of my landing with the higher elevations.  The geologic strata (i.e., the aquifer and the confining bed) would have to line up pretty much like it’s shown in the above schematic.  But if I were a betting man, I’d say that my guess is correct . . .

Moving on to Crystal City.  First of all the name:  it’s for the crystal-clear water that came gushing out of the artesian wells near the town.  It seems to be a regional phenomenon . . .

Here’s a picture from TexasEscapes:

And another:

If you are too young to know who Popeye is – and his associated with spinach, just Google it.

And yes, Crystal City is known as the “Spinach Capital of the World.”  Evidently, someone decided that all of the water gushing out of the artesian wells could be used to irrigate spinach.

If you (like me) guessed that there must be an annual Spinach Festival, you would be correct. 

The Texas State Historical Association has an entry on the “Crystal City Revolts.”  Here’s a little of their write-up:

In 1963 and again in 1969, Mexican Americans in Crystal City [who have long been a majority of residents] organized against Caucasian domination of city hall and the public school system. The result was an electoral victory for Hispanic Texans for the first time since the city’s incorporation in 1910.

The 1963 movement was led by Juan Cornejo, a local representative of the Teamsters Union at the Del Monte cannery in Crystal City. Cornejo succeeded in getting more Mexican Americans to pay the poll tax and vote.

[Oh my!  There was a poll tax.  That’s one way to keep poor people from voting.]

 In addition, the Mexican Texans organized the large migrant farm-labor pool affiliated with the Teamsters at Del Monte. The Hispanics selected a slate of five candidates, who became known as “los cinco,” from among the poor and undereducated Mexican Texans, to run for the city council.

The group faced intimidation by the political establishment. Several workers at the Del Monte plant were fired for wearing campaign buttons, for instance; but Teamsters officials intervened, and their jobs were reinstated. Del Monte went into overtime production to keep workers from voting. Los cinco, however, gained widespread support, and all five candidates defeated the five incumbents in a close election.

I found a whole series of photos (from Picryl.com) concerning spinach harvesting and shipping from LaPryor (which, by the way, was named after Col. Pryor).  The photographer was Russell Lee.  Picryl says this about Lee:

In the fall of 1936, during the Great Depression, Lee was hired for the federally sponsored Farm Security Administration (FSA) photographic documentation project of the Franklin D. Roosevelt administration.

These pictures were taken in the early 1940s. I’ll start with some shot of workers in the spinach fields:

Here’s a truck where they’re unloading empty baskets:

Gathering up the full baskets:

And here, a truck is pulled up to a loading platform:

Women workers going to the fields:

A truck full of male workers:

Breaking up ice before icing the spinach for shipment by rail:

Icing down the spinach at the rail car:

Back to now.  I’ll finish off this post with a couple of shots posted on GE near my landing.  First this, by Crissy Chavira:

I’ll close with this strange, eerily-lit shot by Ramon Palacios:

That’ll do it . . .

KS

Greg

© 2021 A Landing A Day

Henrietta, Ringgold and Petrolia, Texas (with bonus Oklahoma Coverage)

First timer?  In this formerly once-a-day blog (and now pretty much a once-a-week blog), I use an app that provides a random latitude and longitude that puts me somewhere in the continental United States (the lower 48).  I call this “landing.”

I keep track of the watersheds I land in, as well as the town or towns I land near.  I do some internet research to hopefully find something of interest about my landing location. 

To find out more about A Landing A Day (like who “Dan” is) please see “About Landing” above.  To check out some relatively recent changes in how I do things, check out “About Landing (Revisited).”

Landing number 2534; A Landing A Day blog post number 979

Dan:  Today’s lat/long (N33^o 52.450’, W98^o 5.329) puts me in north central Texas:

Here’s my local landing map:

Let’s move over to Google Earth to get a look at my landing.  The Orange Dude couldn’t get as close as he’d like:

Here’s what he sees:

He particularly enjoyed communing with the cattle.

My streams-only map shows that I landed adjacent to (and of course in the watershed of) the Little Wichita River (2^nd hit):

As you can see, the Little Wichita discharges to the Red River of the South (72^nd hit).  (I threw in the Wichita River, just to confirm that the Little Wichita doesn’t discharge to the Big Wichita.) Although not shown, the Red move-or-less discharges to the Atchafalaya.

I love the name Atchafalaya.  Class, pronounce it with me:  ah chah fah LIE ah.

Headed back to GE, the OD perched himself on a bridge over the Little Wichita:

And here’s what he sees:

And thanks to the TX DOT, we can confirm the river’s identity:

The OD moved a few miles further east is a bridge over the Red, just south of Terral OK:

Here’s his upstream look (to the left):

Although I generally don’t venture out of my landing state for subject towns, it’s obvious that for this post I did.  Let me get those pesky Oklahoma towns out of the way (Ryan and Terral, as shown on my local landing map). I’ll start out with Ryan.  From Wiki:

It was named in honor of rancher Stephen W. Ryan, an Arkansas native who settled near present-day Ryan in 1875.

As a result of his marriage to a Chickasaw woman, Ryan acquired vast acreage in present Jefferson County, then a part of Pickens County, Chickasaw Nation, Indian Territory.

Vast acreage, eh?  I hope that he married his Chickasaw bride for love, not thousands of free acres . . .

Wiki also let me know that Ryan is the hometown of Chuck Norris.  I’m not a Chuck Norris fan, and haven’t seen any of his movies.  But he has quite the resume.  In addition to being a legitimate martial arts expert, he has starred in countless movies and written numerous books.  Enough Chuck.  Enough Ryan.

Moving down to Terral.  From Wiki:

Terral was founded in 1892 by John Heidelberg Dace Terral, a Texan who leased the land from a Chickasaw woman, Emily Colbert Fleetwood.   He and Hugh Schoolfield platted the townsite and began selling lots in May 1892.

Now wait a cotton pickin’ minute.  He leased the land from a Chickasaw woman, and then sold lots?  Ms. Fleetwood probably took him to court and lost . . .

Crossing the Red River into Texas, how about Petrolia?  From the Texas State Historical Association “Handbook of Texas”:

In 1901 J. W. Lochridge, a farmer and rancher with land three miles southeast of the site of present Petrolia, hired Sam McCord to dig a water well, but he was unable to find water and struck oil at a depth of 263 feet, thus opening the first oilfield in North Texas. Lochridge used the oil for dipping cattle to rid them of parasites.

[I’m sure it worked well at getting rid of parasites, but it might not have been great for the cattle’s overall health . . . .]

Speculators who had held the mineral rights to the area since the Civil War flooded the area. A shantytown of several hundred residents grew up in the area, which became known as Oil City.

By late 1905 Petrolia was a booming town, with a hotel, a bank, a drugstore, a barbershop, a livery stable, a dry-goods store, a hardware store, a furniture store, a meat market, a lumberyard, an ice house, two oilfield-supply stores, and cotton gins. The sale of alcoholic beverages was illegal in Clay County, but alcohol was freely sold on the streets of early Petrolia. Prostitution and gambling were rampant. Although the original oil field petered out after a couple of years, the community continued to grow, with the discovery of natural gas in the field in 1907 and then the drilling of deeper oil wells..

Here’s a shot of an old oil well from the Petrolia field:

Downtown Petrolia has seen better days.  The OD stopped by and took this shot of a building at the main downtown intersection:

Skipping Stanfield (which is on my local landing map but is a town of about 50 ranch hands, with no Post Office, no businesses, no schools), we’ll move down to Henrietta.  The Handbook of Texas says this:

There are several theories of the name’s origin, but the real explanation remains a mystery. One hypotheses is that Henrietta is a feminized version of Henry, since the county is named for Henry Clay. Another popular but unlikely explanation is that it was named for Clay’s wife, Lucretia.

Two thumbs down!  No way it would be named Henrietta after Henry, and it’s embarrassing that someone actually wrote the words “it was named for Clay’s wife, Lucretia.”  My first guess would be that an early settler told a railroad man that he could name the town in the railroad went through an early townsite.  The railroad man had a girlfriend named Henrietta back home, and so, Henrietta it became.

Trouble is, that’s wrong, because the town was apparently named in 1857, and the railroad didn’t come through until 1882.  Second guess:  There was a meeting of early settlers, with one of the agenda items being the naming of the town.  One gentleman had a girlfriend he left behind back east (of course, named Henrietta).  He was the richest and most powerful of the group, and no one wanted to cross him.  He said something like “I’d love to name the town Henrietta, but it would be a little embarrassing if the word got out that I named the town after a girlfriend I’ll likely never see.  So you boys know how to keep a secret, right?”

Henrietta is the hometown of Charline [Charlene?] Arthur, a bluesy singer who performed back in the 1950s and 60s. 

Here she is, with:”Burn That Candle” (1955):

My last stop is Ringgold.  I asked the OD to cruise around town, and he let me know that he saw something interesting:

It looks like a church on its last legs.  The Street View shot is dated February 2013 (which I realize makes the OD a time traveler.)  I then happened upon the Ringgoled entry from Texas Escapes, and they had an earlier shot of the same church, dated February 2007:

And lo and behold, they had a later shot, dated April 2015:

Ouch.

I couldn’t find a later picture, but I did check out the GE aerial photo, which is dated March 2019:

Unbelievably, it looks like the wreckage of the church is still there!!!  Come on, people!!

Anyway, it’s time to close this down.  I spent quite a while looking for photos posted on GE, but I nearly came up empty.  I mean, really – people post pictures of their homes and businesses; even the inside of a convenience store.

So, I had to settle on this cool cloud shot, taken by Ruby Rath while she was driving on a road a few miles east of my landing:

That’ll do it . . .

KS

Greg

© 2021 A Landing A Day

Tracy City, Beersheba Springs, Gruetli Laager, Soddy Daisy and Dayton, Tennessee

First timer?  In this formerly once-a-day blog (and now pretty much a once-a-week blog), I use an app that provides a random latitude and longitude that puts me somewhere in the continental United States (the lower 48).  I call this “landing.”

I keep track of the watersheds I land in, as well as the town or towns I land near.  I do some internet research to hopefully find something of interest about my landing location. 

To find out more about A Landing A Day (like who “Dan” is) please see “About Landing” above.  To check out some relatively recent changes in how I do things, check out “About Landing (Revisited).”

Landing number 2533; A Landing A Day blog post number 978

Dan:  Today’s lat/long (N35^o 22.657’, W85^o 33.305) puts me in south central Tennessee:

:

My local landing map shows a VP* of small towns, most of which didn’t capture my interest:

*Veritable Plethora

Here’s my in-close streams-only map:

I practically landed in Mill Ck, on to the Collins River (2^nd hit). Zooming back quite a bit:

The Collins discharges to the Caney Fork (also 2^nd hit); on to the Cumberland River (9^th hit); to the Ohio River (157^th hit).  Although not shown, the Ohio (of course) discharges to the Mississippi (980^th hit).

The Orange Dude couldn’t get a look at my landing (it’s in the woods and pretty far from the road that the OD’s allowed to go on.),  But he could see Mill Creek:

And here ‘tis:

My landing is about two-thirds of a mile away, back in the woods.

Moving on to my titular towns, they’re all quick hitters except Dayton.  We’ll start with Beersheba Springs.  I couldn’t find out about the origin of the name, but Wiki says this about Beersheba:

Beersheba is the largest city in the Negev desert of southern Israel. Often referred to as the “Capital of the Negev”, it is the center of the fourth-most populous metropolitan area in Israel, the eighth-most populous Israeli city with a population of 209,687.

The modern city was established at the start of the 20^th century by the Ottoman Turks.  The Biblical site of Beersheba is Tel Be’er Sheva, lying some 4 km distant from the modern city.

 According to the Hebrew Bible, Beersheba was founded when Abraham and Abimelech (a local king) settled their differences over a well of water and made a covenant (see Genesis 21:22-34). Abimelech’s men had taken the well from Abraham after Abraham dug it.  Abraham brought sheep and cattle to Abimelech to get the well back. He set aside seven lambs to swear that it was he that had dug the well and no one else. Abimelech conceded that the well belonged to Abraham and, in the Bible, Beersheba means “Well of Seven” or “Well of the Oath”.

This is a screwy story.  Did Abraham give the sheep and cattle to Abimelech to get the well back?  What is meant by “set aside 7 lambs to swear that it was he that had dug the well?”  Oh, well (so to speak).

Beersheba is further mentioned in following Bible passages: Isaac built an altar in Beersheba (Genesis 26:23–33). Jacob had his dream about a stairway to heaven after leaving Beersheba. (Genesis 28:10–15 and 46:1–7).  Inspiration for Led Zeppelin, I’m sure.

Here’s a shot of the ancient ruins at Tel Be’er Sheva:

It’s time for a quicker stop at Tracy City.  From Wiki:

In 2010 the people of Tracy City elected a dead man, Carl Robin Geary, as mayor.

From the Seattle Times:

A dead man has been elected mayor of Tracy City, Tenn.

Carl Robin Geary died suddenly a few weeks ago. But he received 268 votes anyway in Tuesday’s nonpartisan election, beating out incumbent Barbara Brock with 85 votes in the two-candidate race.

An election administrator, Donna Basham, said Wednesday she wouldn’t speculate on why Geary won posthumously but noted his death had been widely reported at the time in this corner of southeastern Tennessee.

She says the city council will now have to appoint a mayor to the four-year term.

Brock had been appointed mayor 16 months ago when the previous mayor died. She says she thought she had done a good job but added voters wanted a return to the past.

OK, then.  Moving on to an even quicker stop at Gruetli Laager.  Nothing much to say, except that two towns merged.  Geuetli was named after a Swiss commune, and Laager was a railroad stop (likely named after some railroad guy.) Here’s a Gruetli Laager photo posted on GE by Buddy Rogers:

I’m not sure how one is supposed to “Drive Thru.”

How about Soddy Daisy?  It’s much larger than its neighbors (pop 13,000).  Just like Gruetli Laager, the towns of Soddy and Daisy joined up.  Soddy is likely derived from a Cherokee word for the Indians that lived in the area.  Daisy is some businessman’s daughter’s name.

OK.  I’ll have a little more to say about Dayton, none of which has to do with the origin of the name.  We’ll start with the 1925 Butler Act, a Tennessee law introduced by Tennessee House of Representatives member John Butler.  Very simply, it stated that public school teachers could no deny the biblical account of man’s origin.  The law also stated that it was illegal to teach human evolution – i.e., that mankind “evolved from lower orders of animals.”

Charles Darwin

In 1859, Darwin published “On the Origin of Species.”  According to Wiki, “by the 1870s, the scientific community and the majority of educated public had accepted evolution as a fact.”  The picture of Darwin is from 1854, when he was in the throes of writing his book.

As is no surprise, the issue was far from settled in the 1920s, especially in the more rural, more conservative parts of the country. (OK, OK, so it’s still not settled, especially in the more rural, more conservative parts of the country.)

Interestingly, Butler stated later stated, “I didn’t know anything about evolution ….I’d read in the papers that boys and girls were coming home from school and telling their fathers and mothers that the Bible was all nonsense.”

Thems is fightin’ words . . .

So.  The American Civil Liberties Union offered to defend anyone accused of teaching the theory of evolution in defiance of the Butler Act.  The manager of a local coal company (George  Rappleyea, who was against the Butler Act) decided that he would attempt to orchestrate the challenge to the Act and the subsequent trial such that it occurred in the small town of Dayton, where he had his business. 

He surmised that there would be a lot of publicity that would be to the overall benefit of Dayton.

He summoned the Superintendent of Dayton schools and a local attorney for a meeting. 

John Scopes

They called on John T. Scopes, a Dayton High School math and science teacher.  The group proposed that Scopes admit to having taught evolution.   

From Wiki:

Rappleyea pointed out that, while the Butler Act prohibited the teaching of the theory of evolution, to break the law, the state required teachers to use a textbook that explicitly described and endorsed the theory of evolution.   Scopes mentioned that while he couldn’t remember whether he had actually taught evolution in class, he had, however, presented an evolution chart and at least gone through a text book chapter on evolution. Scopes added to the group: “If you can prove that I’ve taught evolution and that I can qualify as a defendant, then I’ll be willing to stand trial.”

Scopes urged students to testify against him and coached them in their answers.  He was indicted on May 25, after three students testified against him at the grand jury; one student afterwards told reporters, “I believe in part of evolution, but I don’t believe in the monkey business.” 

Judge John T. Raulston  “… all but instructed the grand jury to indict Scopes, despite the meager evidence against him and the widely reported stories questioning whether the willing defendant had ever taught evolution in the classroom”.

Scopes was charged with having taught from the chapter on evolution to a high-school class in violation of the Butler Act and nominally arrested, though he was never actually detained. Paul Patterson, owner of The Baltimore Sun, put up $500 in bail for Scopes.

The original prosecutors were Herbert E. and Sue K. Hicks, two brothers who were local attorneys and friends of Scopes.  Even though the brothers were friends of Scopes, They was anti-evolution.

[A boy named Sue!!  I wonder if Johnny Cash knew about Sue Hicks?  OK.  I can’t resist:]

The prosecution was ultimately led by Tom Stewart, a graduate of Cumberland School of Law, who later became a U.S. Senator. Stewart was aided by Dayton attorney Gordon McKenzie, who supported the anti-evolution bill on religious grounds, and described evolution as “detrimental to our morality” and an assault on “the very citadel of our Christian religion”.

The World Christian Fundamentalists Association stepped in and managed to recruit William Jennings Bryan to lead the prosecution.  William Jennings Bryan was a nationally-known orator and Senator.  He was nominated by the Democrats to run in three presidential races:  1896, 1900 and 1908.  (He lost all three). He served in the House of Representatives and as Secretary of State under Woodrow Wilson. 

Later in his career, he increasingly devoted himself to religious matters and anti-evolution activism, opposing Darwinism on religious and humanitarian grounds.

In response, the defense sought out Clarence Darrow, an agnostic. Darrow originally declined, fearing his presence would create a circus atmosphere, but eventually realized that the trial would be a circus with or without him, and agreed to lend his services to the defense, later saying he “realized there was no limit to the mischief that might be accomplished unless the country was aroused to the evil at hand”.

Clarence Darrow was an American lawyer who became famous in the early 20th as a leading member of the American Civil Liberties Union, and a prominent advocate for liberal economic reform.

Called a “sophisticated country lawyer”, Darrow’s wit and eloquence made him one of the most prominent attorneys and civil libertarians in the nation.

OK.  The stage is set.  Here’s a picture of Darrow (left) and Bryan, having an apparently friendly interaction:

Clarence Darrow, a famous Chicago lawyer, and William Jennings Bryan, defender of Fundamentalism, have a friendly chat in a courtroom during the Scopes evolution trial. Darrow defended John T. Scopes, a biology teacher, who decided to test the new Tenessee law banning the teaching of evolution. Bryan took the stand for the prosecution as a bible expert. The trial in 1925 ended in conviction of Scopes. ca. 1925 Dayton, Tennessee, USA

[For six days, both sides went back and forth, making predictable arguments. Back to Wiki:]

But on the seventh day, Clarence Darrow took the unorthodox step of calling William Jennings Bryan, counsel for the prosecution, to the stand as a witness in an effort to demonstrate that belief in the historicity of the Bible and its many accounts of miracles was unreasonable. Bryan accepted. 

[An area of questioning involved the book of Genesis, focusing on Adam & Eve and their family.  Back to Wiki:]

Darrow used stories from Genesis to suggest that the Bible could not be scientific and should not be used in teaching science with Darrow telling Bryan, “You insult every man of science and learning in the world because he does not believe in your fool religion.”

Bryan’s declaration in response was, “The reason I am answering is not for the benefit of this court. It is to keep you gentlemen from saying I was afraid to meet you and let you question me.  I want the Christian world to know that any atheist, agnostic, unbeliever, can question me anytime as to my belief in God, and I will answer him.”

Stewart objected for the prosecution, demanding to know the legal purpose of Darrow’s questioning. Bryan, gauging the effect the session was having, snapped that its purpose was “to cast ridicule on everybody who believes in the Bible”.

Darrow, with equal vehemence, retorted, “We have the purpose of preventing bigots and ignoramuses from controlling the education of the United States.”

A few more questions followed in the charged open-air courtroom. Darrow asked where Cain got his wife; Bryan answered that he would “leave the agnostics to hunt for her”.

When Darrow addressed the issue of the temptation of Eve by the serpent, Bryan insisted that the Bible be quoted verbatim rather than allowing Darrow to paraphrase it in his own terms. However, after another angry exchange, Judge Raulston banged his gavel, adjourning the court.

[Basically, the court ruled that the anti-Bible testimony was inadmissible, and the jury found Scopes guilty.  Then, Darrow addressed the jury thusly:]

“We came down here to offer evidence in this case and the court has held under the law that the evidence we had is not admissible, so all we can do is to take an exception and carry it to a higher court to see whether the evidence is admissible or not … we cannot even explain to you that we think you should return a verdict of not guilty. We do not see how you could. We do not ask it.”

Scopes was fined $100. . .

{The case was then argued in front of the Tennessee Supreme Court, which rejected all defense claims, ruling against Scopes.}

In 1968, the Supreme Court of the United States ruled in Epperson v. Arkansas that such bans contravene the First Amendment because their primary purpose is religious.   Tennessee had repealed the Butler Act the previous year.

The trial was covered by journalists from the South and around the world, including H. L. Mencken for The Baltimore Sun, which was also paying part of the defense’s expenses. It was Mencken who provided the trial with its most colorful labels such as the “Monkey Trial” of “the infidel Scopes”. It was also the first United States trial to be broadcast on national radio.

The front pages of newspapers like The New York Times were dominated by the case for days. More than 200 newspaper reporters from all parts of the country and two from London were in Dayton. 

H.L. Mencken’s trial reports were heavily slanted against the prosecution and the jury, which were “unanimously hot for Genesis”. He mocked the town’s inhabitants as “yokels” and “morons”. He called Bryan a “buffoon” and his speeches “theologic bilge”.

In contrast, he called the defense “eloquent” and “magnificent”. Even today, some American creationists, fighting in courts and state legislatures to demand that creationism be taught on an equal footing with evolution in the schools, have claimed that it was Mencken’s trial reports in 1925 that turned public opinion against creationism.

The film “Inherit the Wind,” is a fictional portrayal of the trial, starring Spencer Tracy and Frederic March:

Footnote 1:  Bryan died suddenly five days after the trial’s conclusion.  The connection between the trial and his death is still debated by historians.

Footnote 2:  Trained chimpanzees performed on the courthouse lawn during the trial.

Time to wrap things up: South Cumberland State Park is just north of my landing.  It contains a lovely waterfall.  Here’s a shot posted on GE by R. Johnson:

That’ll do it . . .

KS

Greg

© 2021 A Landing A Day

Cheyney, Garden Plain and Wichita, Kansas

First timer?  In this formerly once-a-day blog (and now pretty much a once-a-week blog), I use an app that provides a random latitude and longitude that puts me somewhere in the continental United States (the lower 48).  I call this “landing.”

I keep track of the watersheds I land in, as well as the town or towns I land near.  I do some internet research to hopefully find something of interest about my landing location. 

To find out more about A Landing A Day (like who “Dan” is) please see “About Landing” above.  To check out some relatively recent changes in how I do things, check out “About Landing (Revisited).”

Landing number 2532; A Landing A Day blog post number 977

Dan:  Today’s lat/long (N37^o 40.373’, W97^o 42.055) puts me in south central Kansas:

My local landing map shows my two closest towns – Garden Plain & Cheney – and then the huge nearby city – Wichita:

:

Google Earth (GE) shows that I landed in the watershed of Sand Creek, on to Spring Creek, on to the North Fork Ninnescan River (first hit ever!):

Moving over to Street Atlas, you’ll be shocked to learn that the N Fk Ninnescan R flows to the Ninnescan (first hit ever!), on to the Arkansas (141^st hit).  And yes, the Arkansas discharges into the MM (979^th hit).

The Orange Dude got a close, unobstructed view of my landing spot:

And here’s the big yellow arrow:

Moving a few miles to the southeast,, the OD got a look at Sand Creek:

It ain’t much:

Moving over to Cheney, I found some cool back-in-day shots.  First this 1911 Main Street shot:

Here’s a 1909 shot of a prominent building on Main Street:

Here’s the same building today, as shown on GE Street View:

And another view of the same building:

Hmmm.  HWB?  I googled it, and found that it stands for “Hank is Wiser Brewery.”  Gee – I wonder who it is that Hank is wiser than? Check out this, from TravelKS.com:

Hank is Wiser Brewery is a small family owned and operated brewpub located in the middle of downtown Cheney, Kansas. The first house brewed beer was served on April 1, 2005 at their grand opening, just mere hours after Hank Sanford retired from a 22 year sales career in Wichita.

It was 35 years earlier that Hank had purchased his first beer sign. Collecting brewery advertising, visiting over 400 breweries across the country, homebrewing for the last 15 years, and of course tasting well over 5000 different beers all lead to the dream and finally the reality of opening Hank is Wiser Brewery.

Hank works with his wife Jane and his son Steve (the brewer). HWB is going strong for over 8 years now and with Beer-B-Que sandwiches, 7 house beers, 2-3 rotating seasonals, a full liquor bar, and over 50 different bottled beers to chose from, there really is something for everyone. So please join the Sanford family and find out that Hank is truly wiser!

Very cool spot, eh?  There’s no question where I’d go for lunch or dinner if I happened to find myself in the greater Wichita area . . .

My visit to Garden Plain will be a quick hitter.  The town’s website has drone footage of Garden Plain by Nathan Fisher.  I’d recommend starting at about 5:00 (unless you really care about the high school athletic fields, including a trip through the goal posts):

Moving on to Wichita.  Obviously, it’s an honest-to-God city (pop 650,000).  I’m sure that if I rolled up my sleeves I could find more than one thing to write about.  But I didn’t, so I have but one thing to write about:  native son Joe Walsh. 

Here’s a quick hitter about Joe:

• Born Joseph Fidler in 1947 in Wichita
• His mother was a classical pianist
• His father was a jet pilot, who was a flight instructor on the Lockheed “Shooting Star” jet (the first jet mass manufactured in the U.S.):

• He was killed in a plane crash (of a Shooting Star?) in Okinawa when Joe was a toddler.
• His mother married Mr. Walsh (I can’t find his first name), and they moved to Columbus Ohio.
• When Joe was 10, his family moved to Montclair NJ (I didn’t know he was a Jersey Boy!)
• He played guitar in a high school rock band, the Nomads.
• In 1965 (I think) he went to Kent State University in Kent Ohio.  He majored in English, minored in music.
• While at Kent, he played in a popular rock ‘n roll band (the Measles) at local Water Street bars.
• In 1968 (or maybe earlier, since Wiki says he was at Kent for only one term), he dropped out of Kent, made his way to Cleveland and hooked with the James Gang.  Funk #49 came out in 1970, and off he went.
• He did plenty of solo work (Life’s Been Good, Rocky Mountain Way), but was a key member of the Eagles – perhaps best known for the guitar solo on Hotel California.

There’s a strange incongruity in several internet pieces about Joe.  More than one site say that he was a student in 1970, and was present for the May 4^th shootings.  That makes no sense!  He was 18 in 1965, and I think he went straight to Kent from high school.  Funk #49 was released in 1970.  How likely is it that he was a Kent State student majoring in English while becoming hugely successful with the James Gang?

But here’s a piece from the San Diego Tribune:

During a recent interview from his Los Angeles home, here’s what Walsh had to say about Kent State:

“I majored in English and minored in music. Unfortunately, I was at the shootings. After that, I didn’t look at college the same. … (Then) the James Gang (his first major band) started to gather momentum and I decided I’d try pursuing music as a profession. Being at the shootings really affected me profoundly. I decided that maybe I don’t need a degree that bad.”

This makes no sense!  Well, Joe did a lot of drugs.  He also released a written statement about the shootings:

“Today is May 4th and it marks 50 years since the shooting at Kent State University,” he wrote, recalling the day when students voiced outrage that President Nixon wanted to invade Cambodia as an extension of the Vietnam War. “Those of us who were there remember that day graphically, when our classmates, our friends, got shot down. We were naïve young people who had left our parents’ nest and were just starting our lives by going to college and furthering our education.

And we were peacefully demonstrating but because of a total dysfunctional authority trying to handle a situation they didn’t understand, it mutated into elevated emotions and anger, chaos and fear escalated into violence.

“It was a long time ago but the reason it is so important and should be remembered is because history repeats itself — and we are as divided as a country now as we were then — and people demonstrating have no chance against people with guns,” Walsh continued. “The solution then, as it is now, is to be able to peacefully assemble and understand each other and accept our differences, without fear, without hatred, without violence.”

Am I the only one who noticed this?  I guess it’s possible that he was at Kent State on May 4^th and participated in the demonstrations.  But he was famous in 1970, and his presence would have been a big deal.  Whatever . . .

I found this video of Joe Walsh playing Funk #49 on the Howard Stern show in 2006:

I was a Junior at Lafayette College in 1970, and the May 4^th shootings affected me profoundly.  And then in 1974, I went to Kent State to get a Master’s degree in geology, which I got in 1978.  Glenn Frank – who was one of the geology professors at Kent when I was there – didn’t have a PhD, but was a great teacher. He was well liked across the campus. 

He has his own Wiki entry:

On May 4, 1970, four unarmed students were shot dead at Kent State by the U.S. National Guard, during a peace rally against the expansion of the Vietnam War into neutral Cambodia by the United States. There had been repeated protests against police and military recruiting on campus, and the ROTC building was burned down on May 2. The mayor of Kent called in the Ohio Army National Guard, which attempted to disperse students on May 4.

Frank was a faculty marshal at the student protest on that day.  He managed to persuade students to disperse after the National Guard had fired on the crowd.  Immediately after the shootings, many angry students were ready to launch an all-out attack on the National Guard. Faculty members led by Frank pleaded with the students to leave the campus Commons and not to give in to violent escalation:

I don’t care whether you’ve never listened to anyone before in your lives. I am begging you right now. If you don’t disperse right now, they’re going to move in, and it can only be a slaughter. Would you please listen to me? Jesus Christ, I don’t want to be a part of this … !

After 20 minutes of speaking, the students left the Commons, as ambulance personnel tended to the wounded, and the Guard left the area. Professor Frank’s son, also present that day, said, “He absolutely saved my life and hundreds of others.”

Frank later wrote an information brochure about the incident.  He criticized both the shootings and the work of a grand jury that investigated the events on Kent State’s campus, and was cited for contempt of court for defying an order not to talk about the investigation after testifying before the grand jury.

Here’s a picture of Mr. Frank on May 4^th:

To hear his  actual words spoken on May 4^th, click HERE to go to his website. Amazing that someone recorded it.  It’s very powerful, knowing the gravity of the moment.

Well, I landed near Wichita, so I can’t help myself.  Here’s “Wichita Lineman,” with Glenn Campbell and Jimmy Webb (who wrote the song):

I really love this song. I found a great video where a pianist teaches you how to play the song, just by looking down at the keys and listening to her talk. Check it out, if you’d like:

“And yes,” Greg said immodestly, “I’m good enough to play it the way she does . . .”

After spending way too much time checking out the pics posted on GE near my landing, I settled on this shot of a Great Blue Heron on Cheyney Lake (about 8 miles NW of my landing, by Scott Lucas):

That’ll do it . . .

KS

Greg

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