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T-Bird cop car? Spotted in Lenexa, KS at Denny's.
T-Bird cop car? Spotted in Lenexa, KS at Denny's. -
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Map showing the rich bottomland of the Platte Territory that drew the Duffs to the area. You can see how settlement just followed the river. -
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Bean Lake, MO. The second location was Bean Lake, a horseshoe of the Missouri River that flooded often enough that families were relocated in the late 20th century. We walked along just to get a sense of the place. -
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Iatan, MO. November of 2004, Jerry and I visited Chris and Brian in Kansas City. We had decided to try to find some of the towns mentioned by Nerva Duff Moore in her family history. They were all just a few hours outside of KC. I wrote up a synopsis of Nerva's text organized by town and Jerry laid out a course on his GPS. The following descriptions are taken from my text. The first town was Iatan, a little town sandwiched behind the river on the west, followed by the rail road, with the town on the east. The rich bottomland stretched from the highway to the river. -
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Iatan was established in 1842 and appears to have not been built in or updated since the early part of the 20th century. It was generally in poor condition, but with darling homes and buildings tucked in and around the rolling hills and winding streams on their way to the river. -
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Iatan, MO. The town was built on a small grid, perhaps 2 or 3 streets square. This road ran north and south. -
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Iatan, MO. We liked these nifty street signs. -
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Another view of the River House. It was really disappointing to learn that it was not a log hotel. The guy at the museum really had our hopes up. -
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Atchison, KS. This, our third destination, was also the largest of all. It took us over the Missouri River to Kansas. There we found a bustling, charming old town with shops, restaurants and a musem. We had lunch and learned that this might be a good place to return and do research. -
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River House on the right and the nice development of the river front in the foreground. It was a great view of a natural river front. -
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River front as it passes in front of the River House. Boh is walking on the sidewalk. -
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Boh and Jerry on the river walk. -
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Atchison, KS library. The woman at the museum said the librarian was very knowledgeable. In 2005 we were able to find ads and listings for John Reisner's hotel, as well as some of his relatives' businesses, in city directories. We were also able to find some atlases of Atchison. -
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Muscotah, KS (post office). -
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Muscotah, KS. This is the business district on either side of the highway. It was completely abandoned. The residential part of the town was behind the business district on the east side of the road. Most of the people living there today commute to jobs elsewhere. When we returned in 2005 I was sad to see that this largely untouched community was growing. That means these perfect period homes were being torn down.