Geological Survey Bulletin 613 Guidebook of the Western United States: Part C. The Santa Fe Route

At Burrton (see sheet 4, p. 30) the Santa Fe line is crossed by a branch of the St. Louis & San Francisco Railroad ("Frisco" line) running from Wichita to Ellsworth. South of Burrton are wide smooth plains extending to Arkansas River and forming part of the buried valley referred to above. A short distance north of Burrton is a range of sand dunes—low, irregular hills composed of loose sand which the wind has blown out of the flats along Arkansas River. These sand dunes extend northwestward for some distance past Hutchinson, not far north of the Santa Fe Railway. Burrton was named for I. T. Burr, a former vice president of the railway company.

SHEET No. 4 (click on image for an enlargement in a new window)

Hutchinson, the third largest city in Kansas, is attractively laid out, with wide streets, most of which are bordered by several rows of shade trees and extensive grassy parking. It was named for C. C. Hutchinson, its founder. The greater part of the city is on the north side of Arkansas River, but a portion known as South Hutchinson is on the south side. This river, called the Nepesta by the Spanish explorers, is one of the largest branches of the Mississippi, to which it carries an average of 200,000,000 cubic feet of water a day. It rises in the Rocky Mountains, in central Colorado. At Hutchinson the river valley is about 8 miles wide and is a broad expanse of nearly level land underlain by a thick body of sand and gravel that was deposited by the river and contains a large amount of water. Below this river deposit are shales containing thick deposits of salt. This mineral is extensively worked by several plants in Hutchinson, one of which is the largest in the world. They produce not only salt, but soda ash, caustic soda, and other chemicals manufactured from salt. The salt is obtained from borings about 800 feet deep, containing an outer casing down which water is forced and an inner casing up which this water, saturated with salt from the beds below, is pumped into tanks for evaporation. The production of salt at this place averages 2,000 barrels a day.

The salt occurs in beds about 380 feet thick (depth 430 to 810 feet) in the midst of red and gray shales of Permian age (see table, p. ii), where it was deposited long ago by the continued evaporation of extensive bodies of sea water. These great salt beds may reach far to the west and they underlie a large area extending southward to the Oklahoma line, but they appear to thin out toward the north and east. They are worked at several other places, notably at Lyons, 25 miles northwest of Hutchinson, where they are penetrated by a shaft 1,465 feet deep, which exposes more than 400 feet of salt, of which 275 feet (from 793 to 1,068 feet) is mostly in solid beds. There it is mined principally for the production of rock salt. The total annual production of salt in Kansas averages about 375,000 tons, valued at more than $800,000.

Hutchinson is in the center of the Kansas wheat belt and her flour mills have a daily product of 3,000 barrels. Electric power is extensively used in many mills and factories.

In the early days of settlement and travel the Hutchinson region contained many Indians, notably the Kiowas, who had come in from the north, and their allies, the Comanches, who controlled a large country south of Arkansas River. These Indians committed many massacres along the Santa Fe Trail, which crossed the country about 6 miles north of Hutchinson. This locality is believed to have been the scene of a decisive battle in 1778 between the resident Comanches and a band of Spaniards and Pueblo Indians under Gov. Anza, in which the Comanches were routed and their chief, Greenhorn, killed.

Most of the fast trains to the West take the cut-off which goes from Hutchinson almost due west to Kinsley, a distance of 84 miles, or about 15 miles less than the distance by the old main line along the river. On this cut-off the railway crosses to the south side of Arkansas River in the southwestern part of Hutchinson. Not far southeast of the bridge will be noted the tall stack of the largest salt works in the world.

Beyond the river the route goes nearly due southwest for a few miles to Partridge, rising by an almost imperceptible grade from the valley flat to a low plateau covered by sand and gravel which continues far to the west. This upland is covered by deposits laid down by Arkansas River or its predecessor in Tertiary time. It is a great plain, most of which is occupied by broad fields of grain, for it is one of the most extensive wheat districts in the country. The soil is particularly favorable in composition, and in most years the rainfall is sufficient to give large crops, but occasionally there is a year too dry to yield satisfactory returns.

West of Abbyville is a region of sand hills. The dunes are mostly low and covered with soil, which bears crops of wheat or other grains. They are old dunes and, except for a small amount of sand that blows during the windy season, they are not advancing materially. The railway cuts are shallow and show either the loose dune sand or the brownish compact sand of Tertiary age, which forms the surface of the plain.

At Stafford, named for Lewis Stafford, a captain in the First Kansas Regiment, the Santa Fe line is crossed by a branch of the Missouri Pacific Railway. This region is typical of the Great Plains,¹ its smooth surface being apparently level but rising gently toward the west. The surface formation is moderately compact sand, in places containing concretions or streaks of calcium carbonate. The thickness of this deposit is not known, but it is probably about 100 feet. It is supposed to lie on the thin eastern edge of the Dakota sandstone.

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¹The Great Plains are smooth treeless slopes that extend eastward from the foot of the Rocky Mountains into central Kansas as well as into adjoining States on the north and south. Their western margin has an altitude of almost 5,000 feet near the Rocky Mountains, from which they make a practically continuous descent to an altitude of 2,000 to 2,200 feet in central Kansas, where they merge into the rolling prairies that have been described on previous pages. The plains are trenched by the relatively shallow valleys of many rivers and creeks flowing to the east, but extensive areas of the remarkably smooth tabular surfaces remain between these valleys. One of these is shown in Plate IV, A.

PLATE IV.—A (top), THE GREAT PLAINS OF WESTERN KANSAS. Smooth and almost level, but sloping upward to the west. B (bottom), BUFFALO—ONE OF THE FEW SURVIVORS. Photograph by E. L. Bristol, Cheyenne, Wyo.

The major part of the Great Plains is covered by sands, gravels, and loams of late Tertiary age, varying in thickness from 50 to 200 feet in greater part and in general lying on a relatively smooth surface of the older rocks. The materials were brought from the Rocky Mountain region by streams which ran in various courses across the region, sometimes cutting valleys but mostly depositing sediments. The time was one of relatively arid conditions, probably in general similar to the present, the streams bringing out of the mountains a larger amount of sediment than they could carry through to the great rivers on the east. The process was long continued, and it is likely also that at times the stream grades were somewhat less than they are at present, so that the deposits were not to any great extent deeply trenched by small creeks, as they are now. It is known from the fossil bones found in the deposits that the region was inhabited by numerous land animals of a sort very different from those of the present era. There were rhinoceroses, camels, three-toed horses, elephants and bisons of peculiar types, as well as a great many species of smaller animals. At certain places in the region large numbers of bones of these strange animals have been found and dug out, and many of these bones are now carefully preserved in museums.

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Originally the prairies of the central Kansas region were almost treeless except for the cottonwoods along some of the streams, but settlers have planted trees around their houses and along many of their road hedges, so that now some trees appear in every view. It is believed by some that the presence of vegetation of this kind has increased the rainfall and diminished the number and violence of tornadoes, but meteorologlsts deny that these changes have had any material effect.

A few miles northeast of Stafford are marshes caused by salt springs. The salt water was used extensively in the early days for curing meat, and in 1878 a small salt works was erected to extract the salt for sale in the surrounding country.

West of Stafford, notably at milepost 261, the railway crosses a small belt of sand dunes, and near milepost 262 there are bare areas from which the sand is being blown by the wind.

St. John (see sheet 5, p. 36) is on the great smooth plain, in the midst of grain fields. It was named for John P. St. John, governor of Kansas from 1879 to 1883 and a famous advocate of prohibition.

The region about Macksville is a gently rolling plain with very low sand hills, which continue to Belpre and beyond Lewis. Macksville was named for George Mack, the first postmaster in Stafford County.

A large sign south of Belpre (bel-pray') station contains the statement that $1,250,000 worth of farm products were shipped from that place in 1913. Belpre is the center of a prosperous region in which wheat and other grains are raised. The name is French for beautiful prairie.

Lewis is near the eastern edge of a pronounced belt of sand hills, which extends along the east side of Arkansas River for many miles. These dunes become prominent a short distance west of Omar siding, where the railway passes through 20-foot cuts in the loose, cross-bedded dune sand. Here the dune surface is too rugged for much farming, but there are scattered wheat fields in some of the depressions between the dunes. About 3 miles west of Omar Arkansas River is crossed, and a short distance beyond is Kinsley. Here the Hutchinson branch or cut-off joins the old main line from Hutchinson by way of Great Bend.

[The itinerary west of Kinsley is continued on p. 35.]