Route 96

In Lucas, Kansas, twenty-two miles east of Paradise and two-hundred miles west of Hell, is a true masterwork of kookdom: Samuel P. Dinsmoor’s “Garden of Eden.” An eccentric Civil War veteran (Union army) who married a woman 61 years his junior and fathered three children after the age of 80, Dinsmoor came in his dotage [...]

In 1542, the Spanish explorer Francisco Coronado crossed the Rio Grande northwards in search of the fabled El Dorado, city of gold. He didn’t find it, but he and his men became the first Europeans to lay eyes on the lands that are now Colorado, Oklahoma and Kansas. By the time they got to Kansas, [...]