Flyover People
Cheryl Unruh
Originally published 01:00 p.m., April 1, 2008
Updated 01:00 p.m., April 1, 2008
Facing wind, snow and heat, Sally stands on a street corner day after day. But you’ll never hear her complain.
Because mannequins don’t speak, that’s why.
Sally serves as the “open” sign for two antique stores in the Central Kansas town of Ellinwood (pop. 2,119). The mannequin catches the eyes of travelers passing by the corner of Main Street and U.S. 56.
Recently, Dave and I visited Starr Antiques and Elliott Antiques and Interiors, both housed in the historic 1894 Wolf building. We met the shop proprietors, Bill Starr and Jim Elliott.
Dave and I were there to tour Ellinwood’s Underground. But first, we wandered around their shops.
“There’s a safe in the front room. Did this used to be a bank?” I asked Starr.
“It was a bank and a hotel,” he said. In the hotel’s old dining room, he pointed out the wheat and sunflower designs on the columns.
“The Hotel Wolf served evening meals and Sunday lunch after church,” Starr said, “It was the only place in Barton County you could have fresh flowers on the table and linen tablecloths.”
Founded in 1871, Ellinwood was built along the Santa Fe Trail and the Santa Fe Railroad, which opened its line about that same time.
Ellinwood began as a two-block business district and remains so today. But once upon a time, a whole slew of businesses prospered underground, in the dank basements of those downtown buildings.
To begin the tour, we crossed the street and entered the rear of the 1887 Dick Building to access the underground.
When she was a child, Matt Dick’s granddaughter, Adriana Dierolf, had been curious about the steps leading to the basement in her grandfather’s building, but she was never allowed through the padlocked doors.
When Dierolf inherited the building around 1980, she began to clean out her grandfather’s basement. What she found was a bunch of dusty junk, and she also discovered what remained of three long-forgotten businesses.
On both sides of the street, tunnels ran below the sidewalks and connected the underground stores like a mall. Perpendicular tunnels crossed below Main Street, connecting the two sides of the street.
In front of the underground businesses were two side-by-side tunnels; one tunnel was for pedestrian traffic and the other for coal storage.
In the early 1980s, Dierolf preserved her section of Ellinwood’s underground and began giving tours to the public.
Only that section of the town’s underground is accessible. The first room we entered was Tom Drake’s Harness Shop. Horse tack hung on the walls and the room had a dirt floor. Our shoes kicked up dust.
The barber’s shop still had the old chair and a huge mirror, and bottles of painkiller – liquor. In the third room, two narrow metal bathtubs sat on the wooden floor of the public bathhouse. A wringer washer stood nearby to wash the men’s clothes.
“The businesses that they put below were all for men,” Starr said. “Women didn’t go. You would’ve been classified as a ‘soiled dove.’”
In addition to keeping customers out of inclement Kansas weather, the basement saloons and sample rooms were conveniently located out of sight during prohibition in Kansas (1881-1948).
Starr gave an entertaining tour, telling us the folklore version of what activities may have taken place underground in Ellinwood in the late 1800s and early 1900s. He told tales of drinking, gambling and cathouses during those rough-and-tumble days of early cowboys and railroaders.
Touching the old items is allowed in the Ellinwood Underground. “Kids will remember things they get do,” Starr said. “If they get in the bathtub, they’ll remember that.”
The tour price is $5 for age 10 and above, $2 for 9 and under. For information and tour times, call (620) 564-2400.
“Flyover People” is online at www.flyoverpeople.net.
F Cheryl Unruh can be reached at cheryl@flyoverpeople.net.
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