Nicodemus Part 1: Into the Land of Smoking Holes

I, Bernie Harberts, did not use generative AI to write or illustrate this article. Spell check and grammar check, yes. AI, no.

“9 MONTHS OF SUMMER” the hand bills promised the freed slaves during the Reconstruction Period. All they had to do was travel west to stake their claim. When they showed up, they found smoking holes. Click here for the fascinating story of Nicodemus, Kansas….

It began with a promise.

Newly-freed slaves living under Jim Crow in post-Reconstruction Kentucky and Tennessee were given a chance to own their own land. A quarter section of it, 160 acres. All they had to do was show up to claim it.

The catch?

The land was located in Kansas.

Still, many decided a new life in an unknown land was worth the voyage from familiarity to frontier.

So begins the story of Nicodemus, Kansas.

Recently, mule Polly and I took a break from searching for marine fossils to visit Nicodemus.

Enter Angela Bates.

Angela runs the Nicodemus Historical Society Museum. She explained what the freed slaves found when they showed up to homestead their claims. They found much of what I did. Expanses of grass so vast as to blur the foreground and horizon in a sea of waving blades.

Willina Hickman, one of the settlers who had been lured to the Kansas plains by handbills promoting “9 MONTHS OF SUMMER” and “3 MONTHS OF FALL AND SPRING” was in for a shock when she first laid eyes on Nicodemus.

Making her final miles across the treeless, windswept landscape, lured by the promise of “CHOICE FARMING LANDS,” she was overcome with second thoughts.

“I looked with all the eyes I had. ‘Where is Nicodemus? I don’t see it.’ My husband pointed out the various smokes coming out of the ground and said, ‘That is Nicodemus.’ The families lived in dugouts… The scenery was not all inviting and I began to cry.”

To listen to Angela Bates explain Nicodemus’ start, click on the audio player below.

Coming next, Angela Bates explains how Nicodemus got its name.

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