Brick Streets In Dodge City

Just a short story here. My grandfather, Fred Kirkpatrick, Sr. was the City Engineer in Dodge for many years serving as assistant engineer in the early 1900's also. 

I am not sure why concrete was not used on the streets but Dodge, just like the other Kansas towns of the time, began using bricks for paving. These were laid on a sand base over a harder substrate like concrete and took a huge amount of labor to install. The best part about them was repairs could be made to water lines or other buried infrastructure and the street repaired to like new condition. 

I assume that the heavier vehicles today have as much to do with the demise of these streets as anything as their design load probably wasn't intended to support bigger trucks etc. They do last a long time and even though they get rough ,many are still in use today 100 years later. 

My grandfather loved the brick streets of Dodge and was so proud to have been instrumental in the construction of so many. So when you drive down those cobblestone avenues, you will now know who to blame.

The Womens Hat Shop - The Hat Box

My grandmother Kirkpatrick was born in 1900 and came to Dodge City as a young woman to work. Her and her twin sister had both been to college and that was a very rare and new occurrence in those days. 

She had learned to make hats and that being quite the rage among women then for the next 30 to 40 years she worked at that job even in the years when I would visit them for extended times and I was about 13 years old. 

She worked then at a store called The Hat Box. I would ride my bicycle downtown and visit her about every day. I recall the store being about a block east of the Sante Fe Depot and North of Front Street about a block. It sat about 2/3rds the way down the block from where Hwy 50 turned at the Depot and was on the North side of the street. 

My memories are of sweet smelling older ladies scurrying around the store. Hats were perched for display everywhere and some had feathers poking out of them. I think at that time they were boxy little things that sat atop a woman's head and I never recall seeing my grandmother dress up without a hat on. 

Growing Up In Dodge City 1937

This story comes to me from my father who was born in Dodge City on October 21, 1930. Today he divides his time between Luray, Kansas and South Fork, Colorado.

Once upon a time, well really the time was about 1936-37.  We had just moved back from Hutchinson, where my father had worked for the Hutchinson Foundry as a salesman for a  year or so while the City of Dodge was trying to accumulate enough money to pay their employees.  It was the middle of the depression, and no one had any money to speak of.  We moved into a house on Sixth Avenue which was about 3 blocks north of Lincoln Grade School.  I was a second grader and Miss Tulis was my second grade teacher.  Getting started there was not hard since I had attended there before our move to Hutchinson and knew all the kids in my grade.

     Our house was a nice one story on a corner lot.  And best of all it had an old chicken house behind it which immediately became a "club" house.  Not that we had any important meetings there, but it was a place a fellow could get away.  The reason I mention this is that it had some old oak flooring stored in it, and that provided for some really great inventions.

     Our neighbors two houses to the north had a bunch or kids.  The Winfrey's had twin boys, a couple of years older than me, named Larry and Darrey, and a girl named Margie, who was a year younger than me, and a younger boy who was an infant when we lived there.  Anyway we had great times playing together.  

     The area around where we lived was hilly and so provided some exciting entertainment if you were lucky enough not to kill yourself.  One of the great things was that the whole area had sidewalks which served as a place to skate.  We had the clamp on type of skates, which would expand as your shoe size changed.  Now we come to the oak flooring I mentioned.  I cut one of the pieces of flooring and put it between my legs and had a great brake by leaning back and pulling up which caused the wood to drag on the sidewalk.  You could control your speed that way which was really important when you were skating down the steep hills just east of our house.

     Another great entertainment was to walk on stilts. Here again the oak floor was a godsend.  I should mention that my dad made my first stilts, which had long handles and whose foot rests were about 8 inches off of the ground, but they were good enough to learn and master the art of stilt walking.  So after becoming proficient at stilt walking, I graduated to a pair of oak flooring uprights with the foot rest about two feet off the ground, and the tops of which just came to my waist when on them.  I got so I could run on them and jump on them and they became a great source of transportation. There were of course a few spills, but nothing serious.

      Since I have mentioned Lincoln grade school, I should also mention our flag pole which was about 6 inches in diameter, and made of steel and painted with aluminum paint.  The flags were flown every day when the weather was good, and were always taken down at night, to do otherwise was to desecrate the flag.  That has nothing to do with the insane attempt at licking the pole in the dead of winter, lots of kids learned the hard way that your tongue would immediately be frozen to the pole.  It always looked like a losing proposition so I never tried it.

Dodge City Flood of 1941

This story has been shared by my father Fred Kirkpatrick Jr. who was born in 1930 in Dodge City and spent his youth there. ...THE PICTURE is of the 1911 flood in Dodge City and was a postcard from my Grandfather Kirkpatrick's collection of photos etc.

1941 Flood at Dodge City, Kansas

     I was 10 years old when the flood came to our home on Park Street in Dodge.  It began with a cloud burst in Colorado, south and west of Lamar.  Unfortunately this was before they built what they called Caddo Dam on the Arkansas River west of Lamar.  Since there was no flood control on any of the towns along the Arkansas River, everything west and east of Dodge City flooded.

     We had a small farm and had cows, and chickens and a black Cocker Spaniel dog, which I got for my 9th birthday, by the name of "Lady".  When the flood arrived it became necessary to move our cows out of the flood, since the area where they were kept was about 5 feet deep.  Of course the barn was flooded and the hay that was stored there at ground level was ruined.  The chicken house was not located on as low a level as the barn, and so the water in the chicken house was only about 4 feet deep.  We raised White Leghorn hens for their eggs and the nests for laying were in the chicken house along with the roosts which were about 3 feet above the floor and so were out of the water.  

     Our home was a bit higher yet, and the water came up just under the floor joists, but filled the basement.  Park Street ran east and west in front of our house and it was like a roaring river, very swift and could not be waded across.  We took the cows up a block or so north where the water did not reach and some folks looked after them until the flooding was over.  We lost lots of our chickens due to drowning.  A neighbors came and took my mother. and brother and sister, who was crippled from polio, out of the house in a boat.  They lost control about half way across the flooding street, and ended up about  500 feet east of our house, but no one was hurt.  My dad and I went out later after doing some last minute chores.  

     Since we had no place to go we ended up staying at the Trails End Hotel on East Chestnut Street, north and a little east of the Santa Fe Railroad Station and yards.  The hotel was owned by Joe Getche and was run by his sister.  They were Jewish folks, but not practicing Jews.

Joe had some land east of our place where he kept racing greyhounds.  They also had to be moved.  Joe dated my Kindergarten teacher, but as far as I know they never married.  Her name was Miss Andres.

     The flooding continued for about a week, and then we were able to go home.  What a mess it was, with about 6 inches of silt or what we called "flood mud" on everything.  Of course our fishing pond had overflowed and most of the fish had washed away, and the wells which we used for water to irrigate with were never the same.  Our primary irrigation pump, was severely damaged, and what had been a 100 gallon a minute well was reduced to about 60 gpm.  The electric motor which drove the centrifugal pump had to be taken out and repaired since it was full of mud.  It took several years before the damage to the irrigation system, and all it entailed was finally completed.  My dad in an attempt to dislodge the mud from the irrigation well borrowed a high powered rifle and fired several rounds into the well, it didn't seem to help much.

      The cows finally came home and the barn was cleaned out and the hay was thrown away, and they had to live on purchased hay until some new crops could be planted and harvested.  The chicken house was cleaned out and the chickens resumed their egg laying.  We survived, but were always looking over our shoulder for the next flood.