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FORT SCOTT —
Many shops and businesses were closed Monday and for Labor Day weekend, but Fort Scott National Historic Park kept its doors open to educate people about the work that went into building the outpost.
Visitors learned how artillerymen fired their large cannons; learned about historic games; how people cooked over fires in the mid-19th Century; and soldiers fired their rifles and pistols, among others.
They also took guided tours that described how the wooden barracks and officers’ quarters and stone buildings were constructed with 1850s technology, and about the roles men and women played at the post while it was operational.
“We focused on the labor that went into the construction of the fort,” Ranger Barak Geertsen said. “That ties it into Labor Day.”
There also were programs about the fort’s herb gardens and the role of the ordnance sergeant — the non-commissioned officer who was in charge of maintaining the fort’s firearms and powder keg — and visitors got to learn about frontier medicine and life in the First Kansas Colored Infantry Regiment.
Josh Sovereign and his wife, Julie, daughters Jillian, 7, Genevieve, 5, and Olivia, 11, and son, Owen, 9, were on their way back to Lenexa from vacation in Fayetteville, Ark., Monday afternoon and stopped to tour the site.
“We were looking for a way to break up the trip and this is a good way to do it,” Sovereign said as re-enactor Lacy Walden taught Jillian and Genevieve how 19th Century women made soap and washed clothes. “We try to choose vacations that can educate, so we look for places along the way that we can visit.”
It was a weekend of firsts for Walden, too. Newly graduated with a degree in American History from the University of Indiana in Bloomington, Ia. Walden, dressed as a period laundress, was finishing the first week of a four-month internship at the fort.
“I really like it,” Walden said, adding that she had never been a re-enactor before the weekend. “It gives you a lot of insight into how they lived back then. I’ve been learning a lot, too. It’s great to be able to read a book about the fort and then be able to walk into one of the buildings later.”
Walden said she’s been enjoying her time in southeast Kansas, too.
“It’s pretty natural here,” she said. “I was kind of expecting it to be flatter out here. The hills were a pleasant surprise.”
Many shops and businesses were closed Monday and for Labor Day weekend, but Fort Scott National Historic Park kept its doors open to educate people about the work that went into building the outpost.
Visitors learned how artillerymen fired their large cannons; learned about historic games; how people cooked over fires in the mid-19th Century; and soldiers fired their rifles and pistols, among others.
They also took guided tours that described how the wooden barracks and officers’ quarters and stone buildings were constructed with 1850s technology, and about the roles men and women played at the post while it was operational.
“We focused on the labor that went into the construction of the fort,” Ranger Barak Geertsen said. “That ties it into Labor Day.”
There also were programs about the fort’s herb gardens and the role of the ordnance sergeant — the non-commissioned officer who was in charge of maintaining the fort’s firearms and powder keg — and visitors got to learn about frontier medicine and life in the First Kansas Colored Infantry Regiment.
Josh Sovereign and his wife, Julie, daughters Jillian, 7, Genevieve, 5, and Olivia, 11, and son, Owen, 9, were on their way back to Lenexa from vacation in Fayetteville, Ark., Monday afternoon and stopped to tour the site.
“We were looking for a way to break up the trip and this is a good way to do it,” Sovereign said as re-enactor Lacy Walden taught Jillian and Genevieve how 19th Century women made soap and washed clothes. “We try to choose vacations that can educate, so we look for places along the way that we can visit.”
It was a weekend of firsts for Walden, too. Newly graduated with a degree in American History from the University of Indiana in Bloomington, Ia. Walden, dressed as a period laundress, was finishing the first week of a four-month internship at the fort.
“I really like it,” Walden said, adding that she had never been a re-enactor before the weekend. “It gives you a lot of insight into how they lived back then. I’ve been learning a lot, too. It’s great to be able to read a book about the fort and then be able to walk into one of the buildings later.”
Walden said she’s been enjoying her time in southeast Kansas, too.
“It’s pretty natural here,” she said. “I was kind of expecting it to be flatter out here. The hills were a pleasant surprise.”
