Central Kansas Library System

Shortly after the Civil War, a black family travels to Kansas to take advantage of the free land offered through the Homestead Act.

When the magic tree house whisks Jack and Annie back to the 1870's, the land on a prairie near a one-room schoolhouse. They meet a teenage schoolteacher, some cool kids, and one big, scary bully. But just when they think their mission is over, a twister sweeps across the prairie! Can Jack and Annie help their new friends? Or will the twister blow them all away?

"Regional history at its best ... Many of the traditional tales of early hardships- grasshopper plagues, Indian attacks, the stress of loneliness and isolation, drought, blizzards, prairie fires, and the unaccostomed hazards of nature- are retold with vigor and a sense of immediacy. These gritty tales of pioneer persistence and stubbornness are used to illustrate the region's cyclical history of hope and despair ... Not the least is Miner's talents...

"Hattie Jacobs and her family join the Great Exodus of 1879 in search of a better life in Kansas"--

Dodge City, Kansas, is a place of legend. The town that started as a small military site exploded with the coming of the railroad, cattle drives, eager miners, settlers, and various entrepreneurs passing through to populate the expanding West. Before long, Dodge City's streets were lined with saloons and brothels and its populace was thick with gunmen, horse thieves, and desperadoes of every sort. By the 1870s, Dodge City was known as the most violent...

Deeply moved by his mother's memories of a waning era and rapidly disappearing lifestyle, John Ise painstakingly recorded the adventures and adversities of his family and boyhood neighbors—the early homesteaders of Osborne County, Kansas. First published in 1936, his "nonfiction novel" Sod and Stubble has since become a widely read and much loved classic. In the original, Ise changed some identities and time sequences but accurately retained the...

"Rollicking, adventurous, touching. Whether the reader invests only a few minutes at a time or finishes the book at one sitting, he is in for a lot of fun."--American West'Fascinating tales set down succinctly and excitingly. There are stories of lost treasure and sudden riches, of outlaws and sheriffs, of massacres and heroics. Over the trails: Milt Bryan's adventure on the Santa Fe Trail; The massacre on Walnut Creek; A ride for life; The crazy...