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Published: November 27th 2008
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In late 2007 I wanted to make it back to Greensburg KS to see the rebuilding. If you recall Greensburg was totally wiped out by a tornado the first week in May of 2007. In late June I had rolled through Greensburg on the way home from a trip to CO and stopped to take pictures. Here is the original blog
07 Greensburg Kansas. Well I didn’t make it back in 2007 and all of the summer of 2008 I wanted to go, but that trip always seemed to get sidelined for other trips.
I had been watching the ‘Greensburg’ TV series on the Green Channel about how they were rebuilding green and hope to be the first Leeds certified platinum town. The last show had just aired and it was going to be getting colder, so I decided I had better do it while I could. The first day of October I loaded up and headed out to Greensburg. Plotting some ABC points and Presidential Race locations along the way so going it was around 370 miles and coming home it was around 350 miles.
The trip to Greensburg was relaxing, filling in some of my missing ABC’s I stopped
at Osawattomie, Iola and Yates Center. In Iola I stopped and read some of the historical markers about Gen Funston. He was rasied in Iola and served in the Mexican war along with in the Philippines. He earned the Congressional Medal of Honor at 35 years of age.
An unexpected highlight was crossing the path of Jim from Ohio. Jim was bicycling to Las Vegas NV. I crept alongside Jim for a couple miles as we spoke. Mostly he spoke as I peppered him with questions. He was making the trip to get back in shape. But the KS headwinds were kicking his butt. At one point he asked me how fast he was moving, I forget what I told him but it was slow. His bike was pretty heavily laden down. As a car would approach, I would fall behind him. I noticed that his rear wheel was out of shape, it was doing a little bit of a wobble. When I asked him about it he said he had hit a pot hole in MO that had actually flattened the tire and bent the rim. He was lucky enough to find enough parts to put him back
on the road, but the wheel was not something smaller towns would have. He had been camping along the way. And so far had had a fairly nice trip.
I was all set to see the new Greensburg. I was really kind of disappointed. The majority of town was still mobile units and tin sheds. There were many new homes, but I didn’t see solar panels or windmills like I was expecting. Here are the new pictures. They have accomplished a lot, but I guess the hype from the show gave me the impression that they had accomplished a lot more and that their efforts to go green would be more evident. The Incubator, a new mini mall was under construction. It was 2 weeks later I saw a TV program on SCIENCE channel that was covering the building of the Incubator building. It was amazing. The air conditioning is done with air that is piped through the ground to cool it.
The courthouse is under construction. The school system is all mobile units. The county hospital still has 2 of the tent buildings they had last year. The rest are now mobile units. The Post Office was
a mobile unit with all the post office boxes under roofs outside the mobile unit. All the city and county offices were in mobile units. Main street was still in pretty bad shape. The Big Well gift shop was open, so I stopped and got a refrigerator magnet. The new water tower is right by the big well. Duh, the water tower is ideally located by the water source.
After Greensburg I headed out to see get a picture of Ford KS. Passing through Mullinville I ran across the Liggetts Artwork that border the highway. What a hoot. They are posted here
08 Liggetts Artwork in Mullinville KS.
By the time I got home it was pretty late, but it was a really good day. I should have done this way earlier in the year.
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