National Parks Traveler Podcast · Kurt Repanshek

National Parks Traveler Podcast | Kansas Road Trip

·34 min·2 clips

Nicodemus was settled by more than 300 formerly enslaved people who bought lots for $5.

1. National Parks Traveler focuses on Kansas road trip stops at Nicodemus National Historic Site and Tallgrass Prairie National Preserve. 2. Kurt Repencheck hosts the episode, with Lucrecia Horn representing Nicodemus and Heather Brown representing Tallgrass Prairie. 3. The episode asks what two lesser-known Kansas park sites reveal about African American settlement and prairie conservation. 4. Lucrecia Horn says Nicodemus is 'small in stature but big on history' and explains that the Park Service owns two of the site's five buildings. 5. Horn describes Nicodemus as a place where formerly enslaved people became landowners, governed themselves, and practiced freedom of religion. 6. She says the Nicodemus Town Company included about six ministers and W.R. Hill, a white man from Indiana. 7. Horn says the company sold lots for $5 and that the town site covers 161 acres. 8. She explains that settlers also used the Homestead Act to claim land in the township beyond the town site. 9. Horn recounts the oral-history account of Hill sleeping by the Solomon River, then deciding to build an all-black town. 10. She says the first group had about 350 people, including her own great-great-great grandparents, Tom and Zarina, and their three children. 11. Horn says settlers arrived by train from Sadieville, Kentucky, to Ellis, Kansas, and then walked 35 miles to Nicodemus. 12. She says the railroad bypassed Nicodemus by about five miles southwest, which economically devastated the community. 13. Horn notes that businesses left for Bogue and Hill City, while many landowners stayed because they did not want to give up their land. 14. She says the town once had two newspapers, shops, pharmacies, and banks. 15. Brown says Tallgrass Prairie protects 11,000 acres in the Flint Hills and preserves a landscape that must have both fire and grazing. 16. She says the preserve's bison herd had about 112 total animals, including 25 calves, and that the goal is to keep around 100. 17. Brown says the herd functions as a satellite population for Wind Cave National Park, using animals descended from the most genetically pure available in 2009. 18. She describes the prairie as habitat for monarchs, regal fritillaries, and the Topeka shiner, while staff monitor invasive species like sericea lespedeza and old world bluestem. 19. The conversation is conversational and interpretive, with Kurt asking follow-up questions and Brown moving from ecology to history to visitor programs. 20. Listeners interested in Kansas history, bison management, and prairie ecology would get the most from this episode.

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