The recent death of Senator Robert Dole brought back a memory. I had just finished my first year of teaching and was approached by a farmer who invited me to travel south with his crew to Kansas for the wheat harvest. I agreed and drove one of the trucks with a combine loaded on my back. As we traveled down U.S. 281, we came into Kansas where stone fenceposts started appearing north of Bob Dole’s hometown of Russell, Kansas. I remember because a large billboard proudly proclaimed him as a hometown boy.
I had never seen or heard of such a thing as stone fenceposts in my young years and marveled at the sight. Here is what the Kansas Historical Society says about them. “In 1862 the Homestead Act opened the way for the settlement of the plains. People with varied backgrounds were drawn to the dream of relatively free land. The fact that much of central Kansas was treeless created numerous problems for early settlers. A significant problem was finding a means by which to enclose portions of the free range.”
Fields of sandstone lay close to the surface and resourceful people realized it could be cut quite easily and planted in the ground to hold wire like wooden posts. I saw them 56 years ago, and while I’ve not seen or heard if they are still in use, I presume some of them are.
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