Eye On:
Kansas’ Sunflower
Santa Fe Trail
By Laura Stark
The vision for the Sunflower Santa Fe
Trail is a grand one: 33 miles across a
scattering of small cities on the wind-
swept prairie of central Kansas. The heart
of the trail lies in Galva, just an hour
north of Wichita, the state’s largest city.
With a population of fewer than
1,000,
Galva is pure rural Kansas, largely
residential with a quiet Main Street run-
ning through the center of town. It has
one restaurant, a bank and a gas
station, as well as a handful of
small shops. There are few side-
walks, and over the past decade,
the town’s streets have acquired
their first layer of pavement.
“
Most of the walking here
is done in city streets,” says
Wayne Ford, who has lived
in Galva most of his life and
has been the city’s mayor since
1978. “
The Sunflower Santa Fe
Trail is the only trail in town.
When the decision was made
to do a mile west of town, I thought,
‘
What an opportunity to provide for the
community.’”
Though only this mile on the west
side of town is complete, and another
mile is close to being finished on the
east side, it’s a beginning. Even in that
short distance, the trail is a beauty. True
to its name, sunflowers bloom brightly
along the trail in the late summer on the
heels of showy pink roses earlier in the
season. The wispy pale green leaves of
wild asparagus catch the slightest breeze
in the spring, and a few weeks later, clus-
ters of juicy plums, mulberries and black
currants hang tantalizingly sweet.
Along with the twitter of birds in the
thicket and the quiet crunch of crushed
stone underfoot, trail users can hear the
steady rumble of trains no more than
100
feet away. This is a rail-with-trail,
and the Union Pacific rail line is quite
active; more than a dozen freight trains
roll by each day, just on the other side of
the underbrush.
“
Little kids love watching the trains as
they go by,” says Joye Walker, team leader
for the Galva Friends of the Trail group.
“
My grandsons love it. [The engineers]
will wave at us and toot their horn.”
The trail is being built on the old cor-
ridor of the Atchison, Topeka and Santa
Fe Railway corridor, which played a key
role in the settlement of the state in the
late 1800s. As a nod to this heritage, its
trailhead, located just a few blocks from
Main Street, features a gazebo made of old
railroad timbers. The structure, containing
a picnic bench, offers shade and respite
from the Kansas sun.
More than a century after its Wild
West heyday, the disused rail corri-
dor between McPherson and Marion
was preserved by the Central Kansas
All photos courtesy Galva Friends of the Trail
The trailhead on the aptly named Sunflower
Santa Fe Trail (top); the Central Kansas
Conservancy also helped develop the nearby
Meadowlark Trail (middle); volunteers
construct handrails on a trail bridge (bottom).
Trail under construction:
Sunflower
Santa Fe Trail
Location:
McPherson to Marion,
Kansas
Used railroad corridor:
Marion and
McPherson Railroad, a branch of
the Atchison, Topeka and Santa Fe
Railway
Length:
2
miles; 33 miles proposed
Proposed surface:
Crushed limestone
rails
to
trails
u
spring/summer.14
4
tracks ’n’ ties