The kids and I have been dying to go to Nicodemus, Kansas for a while now. Not only does it participate in the National Park Service's Junior Ranger program, but it coincides with my research on the United States Colored Troops (one of the veterans that I've been researching had a daughter that married a man from Nicodemus). We were in the general area at an archaeological dig Hubby and Bubby were involved with (more on that later) near Hays and it was only an hour north to Nicodemus. There's not much in that general area, so you can't do this one on the way to anything really.
Nicodemus is the oldest and only remaining African American settlement west of the Mississippi. The site is free to visitors and open daily. We started our visit by gathering up the kids' Junior Ranger packets and watching a short video, well the older kids watched the video... Shorty was on a nap strike and was in high gear so I wandered around with him :) After the show the packets sent us outside to wander the town. It had you examine buildings representing different aspects of town life (a hotel, school, church, etc...), just a great big scavenger hunt which thrilled the kids!
The town was small and quiet, so when Shorty wanted to "follow" this fuzzy caterpillar in the road I was able to send Bubby and Mookie off to find the items on their list by themselves.
After our round of the town, we ended up at the little playground close to the Town Hall. It was a beautiful day and the kids loved being able to stretch their legs.
When the kids turned in their completed packets at Town Hall one of the rangers asked them each to pick a number between 1 & 42. That number corresponded to a plot of land on the map and the kids could identify with one of the original settlers of the town. They were also given a little bag with fun pamphlets in it and of course their Junior Ranger badge. The kids told me that the young lady who swore them in was from Nicodemus, she did a good job engaging them for the "swearing in". The park rangers were all just excellent and went out of their way to make sure everyone had a good experience.
The kids have dubbed this one of their best Junior Ranger trips because is has 1) been the only one with a playground and 2) they got a cool bag. The site is not a big one, but does a fantastic job with what it has and its only going to get better as they start renovating one of the churches for another display area next year.
I'll tell you what, we'd make this trip in a heartbeat if the chance came up again, the kids had so much fun!
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