I joined the Monticello Community Historical Society in Johnson County, KS not too long after I came to Kansas on 2009. For The last few years of I have been serving as a member of their Historic Sites Committee . . . working to document and preserve those sites in the township deemed significant to the history and development of the area.
To those not familiar with this area, Johnson County is part of the Greater Kansas City metro area on the Kansas Side with the Kansas River as its northern border. You should be able to reference major highways and intersection on the brochure map to the same way-points on a map of the metro area to locate the township.
My experience and training as an architect has been of some help in these endeavors, largely working pro-bono.
The society became a member of Freedom’s Frontier National Heritage Area – a federal organization under the auspices of the national park system. A few years back congress established a system of ‘Heritage Areas’. These heritage are something of a departure of the classic notion of a park that is usually dedicated to the preservation and protection of a natural asset. These heritage areas often cover a broader area of public and private lands, and urban and rural. These areas are defined by some theme that is central to this nation’s history, and well, heritage.
The name of this Heritage Area, Freedom’s Frontier, and its ‘motto’ ‘Enduring Struggles for Freedom’ aptly define this area’s theme. The Heritage area is comprised of an area about a county or so to either side of the Kansas-Missouri Border and a three or four counties west along the Kansas River and about the same number of counties to the east along the Missouri River. In this areas slavery was hotly debated and equally contested with lead and steel. Border wars were fought back and forth long before the first shot was ever fired on Fort Sumpter. John Brown may have fired his last shot at Harper’s ferry, but he fired his first shot in anger in Kansas . . . Bleeding Kansas. Under that motto ‘ enduring struggles for freedom also falls Brown vs. Board of Education in Topeka, Ks, and school desegregation. Also, the area was the absolute final gateway and jumping off to the West.
Freedom’s Frontier has many historic sites sites as affiliates that are working to together to preserve and tell this rich tapestry of history that is not just that of this area’s but of the nation’s as well. MCHS (Monticello Historical Society) is just on of several.
A driving tour had been on the minds of members of MCHS long before I arrived on the scene or MCHS become an affiliate of FFNHA. A grant from FFNHA helped make that notion a reality. I led the process of writing a successful grant application, retaining a consultant to prepare the brochure, coordinating the consultant and working with our own committee to select the sites for inclusion the brochure, research and write site histories and find and choose the best and most appropriate graphics. More can be written about the process and the serious intent involved, but that may be reserved for another note. The brochure is finished, its final format is 11×17 folded into a six panel brochure. It has been broken down into for letter size images for ease of printing.
Take a look . . .
