The train calls. Do you hear it?
Though you can feel it in your bones, that strange magnetic energy that holds you in place despite tons of speeding and unstoppable machinery careening your way.
Near the turn of the last century, trains were regularly passing to and from Yates Center, but had to twist uphill and jog out of their way to do so.
Enter plans for Durand, a rail junction east of Yates Center, that around 1901 was imagined as having a depot, car yards, water facility and more.
Though little remains at the site today, one can nevertheless peel away various historical layers to be transported back, not only through both world wars, but to the earliest settlement of southeast Kansas.
In order to prepare the site at Durand, the Condon Brothers and stone mason Harry Ashley soon set to work after erecting their temporary construction camps. (Incidentally, Ashley was an British immigrant who became Yates Center’s first mayor.)
Enormous piles of dirt were moved mostly by wheel scrapers/slips pulled by teams of mules or horses, and the work was back-breaking, especially in the muddy swamp ground near where Owl Creek creeps through the area.
When it came time to build bridges that would cross the creek, supports were put in place by antique pile drivers, where a crushing weight would be dropped over and over again after being hoisted into position on a derrick.
Much of the work was performed by immigrant laborers, especially a crew of Italians who had to rely heavily on their translator, George Rallis.
If the situation that unfolded around the same time at Iola’s Lehigh Portland Cement is any indication, racial tensions were hot and workers were often armed.
And they weren’t the only ones.
Legend has it that when Durand’s surveyors led their chain in one window of a house and out the other that happened to be standing in the way, a disgruntled resident assigned them a new route by way of a loaded shotgun.
After the tracks were tamped down, the little town began to take shape, and featured a depot, hotel, eating house, store and several homes.
An ad for August Krueger’s shop in the Yates Center News read: “NEW STORE at Durand. Ready for business in connection with our lunch room at the cutoff. We have opened a complete general merchandise, with the highest prices paid for butter and eggs.”
Another figure connected with Durand is C.F. Harder, who, after losing a nasty land battle to the railroad, decided he’d turn the situation to his favor by building hay barns for local farmers, though he ended up losing that battle, too.
