Sowekan: Southwestern Kansas

Hutchinson, Ks: The Hutchinson Gazette, 1920. Very good plus.. 32pp. Quarto. Original printed wrappers, stapled. Slight wear along spine. Minor dust soiling and toning. Scarce, post-World War I promotional for Southwest Kansas and the town of Hutchinson, the seat of Reno County. This substantial, magazine-style publication prints enthusiastic endorsements of agriculture, stock raising, and industry in the region, with numerous photographs of farms, factories, and local buildings. Another major point of emphasis is the salt business, for which the town is still known. The second half of this work is an extensive description and advertisement for its publisher, the Hutchinson Gazette. The trumpeting of enormous crop and food production and celebration of newfound land fertility, in retrospect, is a somewhat grim harbinger of the Dust Bowl: "The land of sage brush and prairie dogs, grass hoppers, wire grass and buffalo has become an oasis of wealth and a land of miracles. Miracles because, in this country, it is common to find field producing crops this year that never produced anything before." We locate only one copy, at the Hutchinson Public Library.