The Flint Hills in Kansas

A trip report & travel guide with pictures

I came across one of my old web sites on the Flint Hills today and thought that some of you might find it interesting and useful. The Flint Hills is one of three places that continue to hold a strong attraction for me year after year. Yosemite, The Grand Canyon, Yellowstone, Manhattan , etc. are all remarkable and inspiring places,  but many lesser known and less visited places are national treasures too, in their own right.  I keep returning over and over to the Flint Hills in Kansas , Big Bend National Park in W. Texas, and the Buffalo River in Arkansas . 

Crossing Kansas on my way to somewhere years ago, I accidentally stumbled into the Flint Hills. Intrigued, I took a short side trip down a gravel road and have been hooked on this area ever since. Since then I have visited and explored the Flint Hills on foot, by car, and by motorcycle whenever I can. 

The Flint Hills, like the desert, has a strong unexplainable pull on some people.  I have driven the 120 miles each way from my home in Missouri many times to spend all day wandering an endless maze of gravel roads that crisscross the Flint Hills, often not passing more than 2-3 other vehicles all day after I turn off the pavement, always finding something new and interesting. To me the Flint Hills is a beautiful place, a prairie ocean - giant waves of rock and soil, cloaked in grasses, forbs, wild-flowers, and animals; occasionally studded with remnants of mans past incursions, failures and successes. 

So, if you want to take an interesting daytrip from KC sometime slip on your Ruby Slippers and go wander the Flint Hills in Kansas.  One of my favorite places.

To see a map, pictures, suggested routes and points of interest, and some shamelessly plagiarized informative and useful information go to:  Flint Hills KS  

To paraphrase R. F. Burton, quoting Boswell in  "Journey to the Western Islands" 1773: My diminutive observations take away something from the dignity of writing, and the place, but I hope you will find Flint Hills KS interesting and helpful, especially if you are not familiar the Flint Hills.

You can also dig deeper into the Flint Hills by reading Least Heat-Moon's 1991 book "PrairieEarth (a deep map) " a treasure of Flint Hills minutia. 

"Whereas Blue Highways dealt with Heat-Moon's auto trip across America, PrairyErth (an old term for heartland soils) records a journey mostly on foot across the tallgrass prairies and grasslands of Chase County, Kans. In a great cornucopia of a book, a majestic, healing hymn to America's potential, Heat-Moon attempts to penetrate the spirit of the land, a land which explorer Zebulon Pike and later white settlers stole from the Kansa (Kaw) Indians. ... Heat-Moon writes of a feminist rancher who hires women primarily, of a farm couple swept aloft by a tornado, of abolitionists who wanted slaves free but not equal. He pauses to ponder fence posts, arrowheads and the nesting habits of pack rats. (good stuff! - rrg) He talks to conservationists and coyote hunters, excerpts pioneer diaries and recreates the 1931 airplane crash that killed football hero Knute Rockne. Each chapter is prefaced by a map and by pages of quotations ranging from Thoreau to Frank Lloyd Wright." First serial to the Atlantic; BOMC selection. Copyright 1991 Reed Business Information, Inc.Amazon.com Prairyerth Books William Least Heat-Moon