Chapter 80 -- Railroads and Incrusted Lakes The 1888 map shows the route of the St. Louis and San Francisco Railroad, 8 kilometers north of Newonia. Successfully bypassing the alleged incrusted lake, the track was laid without problem, or so the railway men might have claimed. The skeptic might accuse the railway men of imaginations run amok by what was no more than profound mud, but as we noted early in our journey, were we to dismiss speculation regarding underground waters that seem nonsensical, what a short study ours would be. Scenic Kansas (1935) by Assistant Kansas State Geologist Kenneth Landes, featured several sinkholes among the state's geologic attributes. Kansas has been the scene of a number of sinkings in historic times. In 1897 a sink of 175 feet in diameter formed directly in the path of the cross country trail near Meade. A year later an acre of land in western Pawnee County slumped and took with is the Rozel railroad station. In 1926, a sink formed southeast of Sharon Springs in Wallace County which aroused country- wide interest. Meade Salt Sink, later known as the Great Salt Well, had in fact breached the Jones and Plummer wagon road not in 1897, but 18 years earlier with a 50 to 70-meter diameter crater, 20 meters deep, filled with 7-percent saline water to 5 meters of the top. Cracks 2 to 5 meters deep, 3 to 20 centimeters wide, radiated 40 meters outward. Meade Salt Sink, 1898 or 1899 Subsidence near Sharon Springs on March 9, 1926, created sinkhole 15 meters in diameter. Within two days, it was 40 by 80 meters, and later yet, 80 by 100 with a depth of 100 meters. Its volume was in the order of 450,000 cubic meters. 1194 DRAFT 8/8/2013 Updates at http://www.unm.edu/~rheggen/UndergroundRivers.html Chapter 80 -- Railroads and Incrusted Lakes Landes could have cited a number of dramatic collapses within the previous few decades. Kansas has hundreds of ● sinkholes, some caused by limestone solutioning, ● ● ● some by gypsum solutioning and others due to salt solutioning. ● ● ● Major sinkhole locations ● are shown in red. The Hutchinson salt formation ● ● ● ● is marked in green. The location Landes' lost Rozel, Kansas railway station is indicated in blue. Unfortunately for Scenic Kansas, however, the author was victim to a tall tale of the stripe we came to know in Chapter 87 as a "Mulhatton," except in this case the perpetrator wasn't Mulhatton, but probably a station agent. Rozel was founded in 1886 on a two city-block acquisition from the Atchison, Topeka & Santa Fe Railroad. Within a decade, the town boasted a bank, a mill, a grain elevator, several retail stores, a telegraph and express office and a post office. But in 1897, according to the national press, the town was swallowed up by a giant sinkhole. "Kansas Town Swallowed Up," being the New York Times report of November 19. A Bottomless Pit Replaces Rozel on the Santa Fe Road Last night the railroad station at Rozel, on the Santa Fe Road, was supposed to rest on a firm foundation. This morning the place, which the night before had consisted of a station, two or three small elevators, and a few other small buildings, had disappeared completely from the face of the earth. Investigation proved that the bottom had actually dropped out of the land upon which the village was situated and that it had disappeared into the bottomless chasm, the depth of which cannot be determined. The place was not inhabited. The hole is about an acre and a half in extent, of an uneven oblong shape, with rough and almost perpendicular walls. It is filled to within about 75 feet of the surface with dark, stagnant- looking water, into which everything thrown, even lumber and light boards, immediately sinks. The depth of this water is unknown, as the longest ropes have as yet been unable to touch bottom. "Engulfed in a Night, Small Kansas Village Sinks Beneath the Prairie," was in the Chicago Daily Tribune, that same day. Railroad Depot, Two Elevators, and Several Small Buildings Swallowed Up by the Earth and Disappear Completely at the Bottom of a Deep Chasm, Which at Once Fills with Water -- No Lives Lost, as the Hamlet Is Deserted at Night. One of those remarkable freaks which go to confirm the belief that a great river of sea underflows all of Western Kansas has just occurred near here. When the shades of evening lengthened into darkness last night, the railroad station of Rozel on the Jetmore branch of the Atchison, Topeka and Santa Fe Railroad, eighteen miles northwest of here, nestled peacefully on the bosom of the prairie, and no one doubted that the morrow's sun would but awaken its little industries to their usual life and activity. This morning when those who lived in the 1195 DRAFT 8/8/2013 Updates at http://www.unm.edu/~rheggen/UndergroundRivers.html Chapter 80 -- Railroads and Incrusted Lakes neighborhood turned their attention toward the little hamlet they were thunderstruck to discover that the place which the night before had consisted of a depot, two or three small elevators, and a few other small buildings, had completely disappeared from the face of the earth. Investigations proved that the bottom had actually dropped out of the land upon which the village was located, and that it had disappeared into a bottomless chasm, the depth of which cannot be determined. The hole is about an acre and a half in extent, of an uneven, oblong shape, with rough, almost perpendicular walls. It is filled to within seventy feet of the surface with dark, stagnant-looking water, into which everything thrown, even lumber and light boards, immediately sinks. The depth of this water is unknown, as the longest ropes have as yet been unable to touch bottom. The theory is that whatever is thrown into the water is drawn under and carried along by an undertow, but there is no current or agitation on the surface water in the hole to strengthen this theory. The fact alone remains that everything thrown into the water immediately disappears in its inky depth, never to be recovered. The Great Round World and What Is Going On In It featured the story on December 9, A strange freak of nature is reported from Kansas. The railroad station of Rozel, eighteen miles from Larned, has been swallowed up. When the people in the neighborhood went to bed at night, the station was in its usual place; in the morning the station, two or three small elevators, and a few other small buildings had disappeared. Investigation proved that they had been swallowed up, and had disappeared in a chasm. The depth of this rent in the earth cannot be determined. The hole is said to be about an acre in extent, of oblong shape, with walls reaching straight down for seventy feet, at which depth the hole is filled with dark, stagnant water, into which anything that is thrown immediately sinks. No lives were lost, as no one remains at the station overnight. The interest of the surrounding country is intense, and many theories are advanced as to the cause of the catastrophe. Some think that the station dropped into an immense cave, and others that it was caused by the underflow of the Arkansas River, which is overflowing its banks at the present time. Others think that this section of Kansas is over an immense underground river or sea. The devastation came as a shock to the 200 residents of Rozel, as the railroad station and surrounding buildings were all still there, intact. The c 1900 photo shows the depot in good health. The story, however, continued to fool people, even assistant state geologists, for decades. The story-of-the-story is perhaps best pieced together in "Hoary Western Kansas Hoax Still Being Accepted as Something True," Hutchinson News-Herald, October 20, 1952. 1196 DRAFT 8/8/2013 Updates at http://www.unm.edu/~rheggen/UndergroundRivers.html Chapter 80 -- Railroads and Incrusted Lakes One of the hardiest Grade A hoaxes ever perpetrated in Western Kansas -- the famous 1890 "Rozel sink hole" canard apparently is still deluding Kansas historians, geographers and geologists. After more than 80 years the new historic gag that was swallowed hook, line and sinker still is accepted as fact in some quarters. The Larned Tiller & Toiler this week undertook once more to debunk the yarn, although the newspaper admitted nobody ever ferreted out true facts in the case, except there never was any such hole in the western Pawnee County town... The newspaper gives the following version of the hoax. Nobody has ever ferreted out the facts of the case, but there wasn't any sink hole, that's for sure, although some of the eastern newspapers built up the story until they had the whole town of Rozel swallowed into a bottomless lake inhabited by blind fish. Most credible explanation of how the story got started is this: The Santa Fe depot at Macksville burned down. Macksville, on the main line, was a more important station than Rozel on the Jetmore branch. So the Rozel building was loaded on a boxcar one night and transported to Macksville to replace the one that had burned. Later that night it rained and filled the shallow depression where the Rozel depot had stood with water. The station agent at Larned, Dick Beeth, had a reputation as a practical joker and he is believed to have started the story about the depot sinking into a bottomless pool.