- 1920s - (Part 9 of 14) -
“In January of 1926 a meeting and banquet was held at the Masonic Temple, with the main topic being the need to build a hospital in Eureka. Many speakers pressed the need for adequate facilities to care for the sick and injured. One of the speakers referred to the law now on the statue books of this state providing for county hospitals and the method by which they may be built.
Dr. Lawrence of Emporia explained the work of the county hospital in Emporia and its advantages. He cited cases taken from Greenwood County to the hospital at Emporia for treatment and it was brought out that this county spends thousands of dollars each year in hospital and medical fees for service in hospitals at Emporia and Wichita in caring for the unfortunates who cannot pay their own expenses.
In January of 1926 a fire thought to have been started by some person lodging in the building overnight, totally destroyed the Union School house in District 63.
There was no fire left in the stove the evening before when the teacher left. A crowd gathered but nothing was saved. Over the ruins an informal meeting of the district was held and it was decided to hold school on the Little Flock church building. Insurance on the destroyed building amounted to $1,000.
In March of 1926 Eureka was thrust into the limelight of the baseball word when an announcement was made that Johnny Butler, a native of Eureka, is a new infielder on the Brooklyn Dodgers baseball club. Butler was born in Eureka thirty years ago.
The article in the Sporting News contained this story: Johnny Butler, new infielder arrived at the Clearwater, Fla. Camp early last week, and spent his first day in bed with illness. He became sick on his way to camp from California. The first thing Butler did was to call the newspaper men in and straighten them out on his age. The player is indexed as being 33 years old, where as he actually is only 30. Johnny also wanted them to know he was not born in Boston, but is happy to claim Eureka, Kansas, as his birth place. He started play in 1914, as a member of the Tacoma Club, and not in 1909 as previously stated.
In April of 1926 four prisoners escaped from the Greenwood County jail about one o’clock in the morning by sawing off the iron bars on one of the south windows of the jail and lowering themselves to the ground by means of a rope made by tying blankets together. There is no night jailor here and the officers knew nothing of the escape until about 7 o’clock. One of the escaped prisoners was recaptured in the Burkett oil field several miles north of Eureka.
Sheriff Ronen says he has learned that the bars were sawed through in the afternoon while an auction sale was in progress in the court house yard and the unusual noise and commotion made it possible for the prisoners to use the saw without being heard. Although there were six other prisoners in the jail who did not attempt to escape, none of them said a word that might give a hint to the officers as to the intended jail break.
Sheriff Ronen was around the outside of the jail at that hour and everything seemed all right. He slept in a room beneath the jail.
Serious injuries to the right arm of eleven-yearold Preston Monroe were reported in April of 1926 when the Buick car he was riding in with other family members was “side-swiped” by a car, the driver and occupants of which were unidentified. The Buick was heavily loaded and, on its way, back to Eureka when it met the other car traveling east. The boy, because of a lack of room, was sitting on a door on the right side of the car with his elbow raised and one hand grasping the top in such a position that it was struck by a passing auto. The arm was slashed open from the wrist to the elbow. The boy was taken to the El Dorado hospital following first aid treatment by a local physician.
Forty thousand men are needed from “out of state” to harvest the record 1926 Kansas wheat crop. Mobilization of the wheat army must be partly completed by June 15 when the south-central counties will hear the first-whir of the binders. Central and western districts comprise the major wheat belt and it is from this section that farmers appeal to out of state labor. All railroads for the harvest hands led to Wichita, Wellington, Hutchinson, Pratt, Dodge City, Great Bend, Salina, Ellis and Colby.
In August of 1926 there was an order by the superintendent of the Eureka City water works placing restricts upon the use of water in the city. Consumers are restricted to the use of city water only where it is essential to the public health and continuance of busin ess. Wh i l e there is no crisis, the action is being taken to save Eureka from the fate of other towns which are facing a water famine.
In August of 1926 the electrical distribution system of Madison was sold to the Kansas Electric Power company for $25,000 and an agreement to a thirty- five-year contract was made with the city lowering the rates all along the line. Under the new arrangement, the power company will have charge of all distribution. Madison officials viewed the sale of its plant as a decided advantage to the town as the system was in need of repair.
In September of 1926 the new tennis courts at Eureka High School were opened to the use of the school students. At an expense of $200 two courts received backstops and have been surfaced with a layer of crushed rock. Upon these courts the schools will play their matches ,besides affording courts for recreation for those who are not proficient enough with their racquets to represent the school.( These courts would have been on the east side of the old high school, near Greenwood Street and east Fourth Street) In September of 1926 arrangements were being made to build a $300,000 glass factory, to be known as the Eureka Glass Co. and be located on North Jefferson Street beside the Missouri Pacific, and Santa Fe r a i lway tracks. (Where Marshall School is tod ay.) When run ning at full capacity, the factory will employ between 200 and 250 men and women, and a payroll of around $8,000 per month.
The product of the factory will be table glass, and art and fancy glass. The sand for the glass will be secured from Grove, Oklahoma. Soda ash and the other ingredients will be procured from near Hutchinson. Natural gas will be furnished from the field east of town.
Engineers were busy making a survey for the plant and excavation work for the plant has started. The business men of Eureka are behind the plan and have as their aim a population of 10,000 for Eureka by 1930.
To help build the plant 336 lots in town need to be sold, ranging in price from $200 to $750. These lots were in the east part of town. The lots are to be settled for in payments of 25 per cent, the first payment to occur when the building is started, another quarter when the building is erected, a third when the equipment is installed, and a fourth when the payroll reaches $2,000. Teams of citizens were selected to start putting the lots on the market. The merchants have not pledged to sell any specified number of lots in order to secure the factory but gave their word that they would go out and try to sell these lots. By late September 42 lots had been sold. The owner of the plant was in St. Louis where he is buying steel for the building. (By December approximately 80 lots were sold and the glass plant was never built) In October of 1926 the old Lutheran Church building on the southeast corner of 4th and Elm Streets was being used as a school to relieve the congestion problems caused by record enrollment. Sixty students were moved to the old church building. Thirty of the students were in the fifth grade and thirty fourth graders were also moved. The school house has not been named yet and the school children will name the school.
In November of 1926 there was quite a controversy over the natural gas being burned in Eureka. In some homes the gas burned perfectly, making plenty of heat for cooking and heating purposes, in others it has been an endless problem and discomfort. It is hard to light, blows out if turned on full force and at times will not ignite at all. The local gas company has been at its wits end to solve the problem, but now feels sure it has the situation in hand.
For the past two years Eureka has been burning gas from the field east of Neal. Recently the load proved too heavy for the supply and the gas company bought gas from a field six miles east of Eureka and made connections with their wells. This is when the trouble began. A sample was sent to the state university at Lawrence for analysis and back came the report that it is all right and will burn perfectly. But it didn’t burn, not everywhere in Eureka, in fact it burned in only a few homes. It is now announced that by the simple expedient of increasing the gas intake orifice on gas burners and shutting off some of the air intake the gas will burn perfectly. The new gas contains elements in different proportion to that of the gas from the original wells of the Neal field and the stove or furnace must be readjusted to burn the gas from the new field. A number of consumers of gas have made the suggested adjustment to their stoves and furnaces during the past few days and, the results has been fairly satisfactory.”
