8 Rural Elements

The 8 Rural Cultural Elements, found in every town, are:

Art
Architecture
Commerce
Cuisine
Customs
Geography
History
People

You can find each and every one of these in each and every town - take a look around you with Explorer Eyes and see if you can identify them all in YOUR town.

Crossing the Delaware

The trip started with an assignment.. from our fearless Rural Leader Marci Penner, founder of the Kansas Sampler Foundation.

We were to research the community of Winchester Kansas, with results shared at the Rural Leaders Retreat.

We took it as a sign of the importance of what we were to discover when we found ourselves Crossing the Delaware, into the great beyond...

After the historic crossing, we took a hard right into the St. Mary's Cemetery, because as all Kansas Explorers know, dead men (and women) DO tell tales...

St. Marys Cemetery

Cemeteries are great sources of information - maybe not history, specifically, but about the character of the people. Quotes on tombstones, little gatherings of items left by loved ones, artworks, engravings, and the timeline of the people all make up a part of a cemetery history lesson.

Were the Herbster family members fond of John Deere? Were they John Deere Dealers?

Some more Cemetery photos can be seen on the Winchester Photo Blog.

There's No Such Thing as a Wrong Turn

You can find the most amazing things when you don't pay attention to the route markers...

For example, we learned all about a Free State/Slave State battle at the Hickory Point Historical Marker, involving Grasshopper Falls (now Valley Falls) and Hickory Point.

At the bottom of the marker, there was a mention of another famous Kansan, John Steuart Curry. He grew up in a house just 1/4 mile from the marker...

The No Wrong Turns philosophy of Exploring leads to another great Explorer saying: Dare to do Dirt! So we Did Dirt to enter Winchester.

Winchester Public Library

Storytelling Time at the Winchester Public Library is a great place to watch young soon-to-be Explorers. It serves patrons of all ages with traditional (paper and pencil and book) and modern (computer access) technology.

The public library was started by Ruth Clark, a retired school teacher. She started the local system that later branched into the state system, through her devotion to the project. The original library was downtown, and now houses Aunt Sadie's Quilt Shop. The impressive new library was built in the first part of the 21st Century, with a lot of history of early Winchester days preserved and presented inside.

Earlier, another woman initiated a lending library out of her home. Local school children could borrow a certain number of books, determined by the child's age, on Fridays only. The school bell would ring, children would run down to the house, pick out their books, return their old books, and run back to the school yard before the busses left.

That woman was also tied to the famous John Steuart Curry... The Lending Library was run by Mrs. Calvin Curry, John's Aunt by marriage.

Winchester's Newspaper History

Eileen Roberts, the Pink Princess, found out the following over the phone with Ray the Historian:

Newspaper established in 1877 and ceased in 1970. It was called the Auger, then the Herald, and finally the Winchester Star. For most of its published life it was the Winchester Star.

Hospital Hannah

The power of community is evident in the Hospital Hannah Thrift Shop, 212 Winchester Street in Winchester.

This newly re-opened resale store offers treasures of all kinds (including masks) for eager Explorers, and benefits the local hospital.

When we arrived, the two shopkeepers (Joy Houston and Betty Reynolds) were having a take-out dinner from the Hospital, which provides a kind of senior meal program, also open to the general public so that the seniors can still get a hot meal and socialize, but still live independently.

H.H. was originally opened 50 years ago to help build the hospital, by a woman ho called herself Hospital Hannah. Her real name was Dorothy Schwemps, but no one really knows how to spell that so they just say Hospital Hannah.

This represents the "Commerce" Rural Element, run by the "People" Rural Element, exemplifying the "Custom" Rural Element of the can-do people of Winchester.