Frank Carlson Library

This illustrated guide to Kansas ghost towns will delight travelers and armchair tourists alike. Organized by region, it tells the story of 100 towns that have either disappeared without a trace or are only "a shadowy remnant of what they once were." Fitzgerald chronicles each town's settlement, politics, colorful figures and legends, and eventual abandonment or decline. Ten maps and detailed intructions for finding each site are included.

"Bank robbers wreaked havoc in the Sunflower State. After robbing the Chautauqua State Bank in 1911, outlaw Elmer McCurdy was killed by lawmen but wasn't buried for sixty-six years. His afterlife can be described only as bizarre. Belle Starr's nephew Henry Starr claimed to have robbed twenty-one banks. The Dalton gang failed in their attempt to rob two banks simultaneously, but others accomplished this in Waterville in 1911. Nearly four thousand known...

"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...

Pictorial history of Kansas with more than 650 photographs, drawings, and paintings.

Witty, Spontaneous Narrations of the Early West.

This book highlights the importance of Kansas' opera houses to the cultural and social development of Kansas during the last half of the 19th century and the early part of the 20th century. The types of civic and cultural entertainments that occurred in these structures and the actors who graced their stages are discussed. A detailed listing of 900 opera houses located in more than 400 Kansas communities and the activities that were held there, from...