609. Holton, Jackson County (KS062)

Admittedly, this is a good solid courthouse and normally I would give it slightly higher marks, but you also have to understand…  This shot?  It’s literally my best guess as to what the front of the building is.  Both this and the other side look identical, but there’s no flagpole.  There’s a circular drive on the other side, but there’s also dumpsters over there, making me think that the drive is just for access to those and not some original pathway to the front.  There is a gazebo and it makes sense that it would be in the front, but it’s near the dumpsters, sited between a front and side so that offers me little insight.  In the end, you’ve got my best guess here, take it or leave it.  If you have greater insight or can confirm that it’s the wrong facing, I look forward to seeing both your rationale and photographs.  As for the cache, I spent a lot of time wrangling over what to get.  I was sorely tempted by a lakeside park (appropriately named Lakeside Park)  which contained three caches with state names I didn’t have yet for the State Name Challenge I was (and still am lackadaisically) busy working.  I figured that if I was nearby, I might as well grab them all, but it turned out the park was closed to vehicles at the time and I didn’t have the hour and a half to walk into the park for them.  Instead, I opted for a virtual on the way into town.  Had I seen it at the beginning, this is what I would have grabbed without hesitation in the first place. 

Ladies and gentlemen (or however you identify—I don’t mean to be gender assumptive), at this point I would like to bring into the story our favorite fighting abolitionist, the one and only John Brown (sidenote: there are actually a lot of John Browns…).  At this location, he had an engagement called, as you can see, the Battle of the Spurs (and no, not this one or this one, either).  To sum up, Brown was escorting some escaped slaves when his party noticed a force at a river crossing looking for him.  He left the slaves at this cabin and then headed for the river. Outnumbered two to one, Brown slowly but determinedly led his men across the crossing towards the force.  The enemy leader, scared of Brown’s fearsome reputation, immediately turned his force around and ran without either side firing a shot.  Brown’s men, mocking that they only saw the enemy spurs, gave the engagement a grandiose name, and thus was history made or some kind of crap like that.  Always willing to give time and column inches to Mr. Brown, I happily logged this one.  One of these days, when I make I to Northern New York, I’ll have to visit him at his homestead, but until then I’ll content myself to follow a few of his footsteps.  My work done here, I was back on the road again.  As always, I was trying to make it to a destination before dark so I raced down the road again, passing through…