In May the City will begin to lengthen
Välkommen Trail, the 2ó-mile bicycle and pedestrian
byway that now winds through Lindsborg
south and north. The project will add a triangular
1. -mile route in northeast Lindsborg, roughly
from Bethany College to the Emerald Lake subdivision
and back.
A new northern track – the triangle’s hypotenuse
– will angle northeast from the current north
trailhead near the College to the north tip of the
Lake; the southern part of the Trail extension – the
base of the triangle – is eastward along Swensson
Street, then a jog north along a line just west of
the subdivision.
This new, $1 million extension is difficult to
envision from, say, the vacant grassy stretch near
the trailhead, or even from a spot along the overpass
with its view of the Bethany Home assisted
living center and the small Lake beyond. But for
those who have traveled the current Trail, the idea
quickly comes to mind.
Välkommen Trail runs north and south through
Lindsborg in two connected routes, in a kind of
serpentine meandering along lush grassy slopes
and lines of healthy cedars; there are resting areas
with bike racks, lighting, and shaded benches, and
In some places leafy little plots and garden shrines
that people have cultivated along the way. These
pockets of beauty can pop up in a surprise, much
like those flowered beds tucked curbside at a street
intersection in some neighborhoods, or among the
tiny abandoned spaces along an alley. (They are
gifts, proud and radiant; some are perennial, all
seem new.)
The Trail itself is superior, a boulevard of concrete
ten-feet wide, convenient for any walker, or
jogger, stroller or cyclist. The extension will be yet
another jewel in this crown.
*
The current Trail, a $1.5 million project, was
incubated on Dec.28, 2000, when the City filed
a request for a National Interim Trail Use permit
with the federal Surface Transportation Board,
the chief regulatory agency for railroads. The
Trail was to be built on abandoned rail beds of
the Missouri Pacific and Union Pacific Railroads.
Then followed a long stretch of wagering and haggling
with the railroads, and countless planning
sessions among City officials and local interests.
Construction began in early March, 2006, with
the opening ceremony on a muggy Saturday morning,
July 29. Even then, with landscaping not quite
finished, the project was thrilling, the spread of
its solid concrete, its trail heads, its lighting, its
shaded benches and rest stops. The Trail’s bridge
over the Smoky Hill River has become iconic, a
tourist Mecca and photographer’s magnet.
Here was government at work, helping to make
a community more livable, to polish its appeal.
With each year the Välkommen Trail matures,
acquiring patina, the reassuring comfort of function
and familiarity. An extension, with its package
of state-federal financing, has been a no-brainer.
*
When great projects call, the community often
answers. Long before the City officially opened
the current Trail, the Smoky Valley Historical
Association started plans to erect 2 x 3-feet historical
markers along its winding stretches with signs
placed at special, significant places. Each sign has
been sponsored by a local business or individual
donors. The first two, unveiled in late May 2007,
mark the sites of the former Union Pacific and
Missouri Pacific Railroad depots.
“Without the railroads, Lindsborg would not
be here today,” Corky Malm, the late venerable
volunteer once said. “We hope the signs welcome
people to a historical trail of the people, businesses
and industries that have made Lindsborg what it
is today.”
The Trail is a diary along the old rail beds,
an education in the area’s history. The desire to
build the Trail led to a Historical Association Trail
Committee, led by Malm with members including
John Riggs, Ken Branch, Don Howe and board
members Margaret Nelson, Bill Carlson and Chet
Peterson. Bertil Malm, Ken Swisher, Einar Johnson
and others were involved, gathering at the sites to
help dig the holes for the sign posts and prepare a
brief program for installation ceremonies.
Six years ago, in May 2012, a crew of abouta half-dozen wily, history-hardened veterans
showed up near the Trail’s Union Street intersection
to install a marker commemorating the
Methodist Church in Lindsborg. The sign gleamed
with the likeness of a tomte from its creator, the
late Norman Malm, also a church member. (The
Methodist Episcopal Church, organized here in
1879, worshiped in the Swedish Methodist Church
until 1887, when members built a church at 224
S. Main.)
Peterson and Swisher were armed with a portable
auger; They were there to make short work
of this installation, their 25th, digging two 30-inch
deep holes for each leg of the sign’s heavy iron
frame.
Short work became long work. The men had
struck a solid layer of chunk rock, once used to
cushion the ties and rails in the days when railroads
brought commerce to the Smoky Valley.
They had struck history, in hard form. It came
loose reluctantly, a rock at a time.
“It’s all my fault,” chuckled Bill Carlson, a regular
with this volunteer crew. He had worked for
the railroads in Lindsborg decades ago (“78 cents
an hour…”). Carlson was on his knees and elbows,
reaching with gloved hands into one of the holes,
removing a handful at a time the rock and dirt he
may have packed so many decades earlier.
*
In June 2010, the Historical Association published
a new edition of the illustrated booklet that
documents its Trail signage project. The free publication
contains photographs and small narratives
for 23 of the Trail’s signs and the community history
that the project celebrates. The original booklet,
published in June 2007, listed 17 signs. When
the Association first discussed a marker project for
the Trail, the goal was ten signs.
A year later, in May 2011, installation of a Trail
sign with the title “Lindsborg’s Boxcar Children”
carried a candid and unswerving message about
the impact of railroads in the community. That sign
was erected at the location of a “railroad boxcar,”
which served as home for Martin and Frieda Opat
and their family for nearly a decade, from 1930
to 1939.
A special significance came with this sign; the
railroads brought life to the early, emerging towns
and cities of the Plains, and to Lindsborg, where
Martin Opat came to work for the railroad and to
raise a family – one that would ultimately include
nine children, all boys, all grateful that the railroads
had provided work and, in their case, shelter.
They would become prominent, productive members
of the community.
The Trail’s historical markers are an affectionate,
anecdotal chronicling of more than a century
in Lindsborg and the Smoky Valley. They are the
living enterprise of men and women who want us
to know how we have lived and died, prospered,
perished, or simply existed by nature’s quirky
authority. With an extension of this Trail, it is difficult
not to imagine more of those markers.
***
Among Historical Association signs along the Trail
(sponsors in parentheses):
– A Brief History of Early Lindsborg (Lindsborg Community
Foundation); Terrible Swedes (Lindsborg Quarterback Club);
Bethany College (Wallace Chevrolet of McPherson); Birger
Sandzén (Peoples Bank and Trust of McPherson); Messiah
Chorus (First Bank of McPherson and Assaria); Bethany
Lutheran Church (Doris Johnson Stump); Railways to
Highways (Mid-Kansas Co-op);
The Power Plant (Dauer Welding and Machine); Missouri
Pacific Depot (Hemslöjd, Inc.); Site of Many Uses (Curtis and
Jill Enterprises, LLC, dba Anderson Body Shop); Home and
Studio of Anton Pearson (Corky and Deloris Malm); Hagstrom
Manufacturing Company (Lindsborg Concrete Products);
Crossing the Smoky (Midway Motors of McPherson); The
Swedish Pavilion (Dr. Duane and Nancy Fredrickson);
Smoky Valley Roller Mill (Lindsborg State Bank); Crescent
Flour Mill (Scott’s Hometown Foods); Kansas Pacific Depot
(Farmers State Bank); Red Barn Studio and Museum (Lindsborg
Lions, Kiwanis and Rotary service clubs); Messiah Lutheran
Church (members of Messiah Lutheran Church); Hobo Camp
on the Smoky (members of the Trail Sign Committee);
Art in Lindsborg (Ron and Loren Dauer dba Town and
Country Repair); Evangelical Covenant Church (members
of Evangelical Covenant Church); Lindsborg Public Schools
(USD 400, Smoky Valley School District); Lindsborg’s Boxcar
Children (E-M Sand and Gravel and the family of Edward
Opat); Trinity United Methodist Church (Norman Malm
Memorial)
‒ JOHN MARSHALL
