Sharpes Creek Drive
Sharpes Creek Drive
Location: Chase County. The Sharpes Creek Drive is a scenic 17 mile Flint Hills route from Bazzar to Matfield Green. Turn East at Norton Street in Bazzar, cross the railroad tracks, then head south. After about 11 miles, turn right at the intersection. Road has a good gravel surface and is suitable for a carefully driven passenger vehicle.
Photos Copyright Harland J. Schuster. Please do not use without permission.
In Kansas--and in life--sometimes it's best to pull off the main highway and take the road less traveled. Sure, the back roads may get a little bumpy in a couple places, but, oh, the view! Such is the case with the Sharpes Creek Drive in Chase County. Chase County bills itself as the "heart of the Flint Hills", and this is indeed an accurate description. While the nearby Tall Grass Prairie Preserve is being "discovered" by a growing number of visitors, this quiet country road offers its own stunning views of the Flint Hills.
After
traveling south for five miles or so, the route crosses a cattle
guard, the fences disappear, and before you stretches a vista much like that
which must have greeted the first pioneers, and which the Red Man called home
long before that. Of course, cattle have replaced the bison, but except
for that, the view must be much the same as it has been for centuries untold.
Perhaps the best times of the year to view the area are in early summer and
early fall. By early summer, the hills are a green velvet of grass studded
with colorful wildflowers. Folks speeding along the nearby Kansas Turnpike
may view the area as nothing more than "just grass", but nothing could be
farther from the truth.
The prairie is far
more complex than the casual observer might realize. Once, the Flint Hills
were only one percent of the tall grass prairie in the United States.
Today, they are just about all that is left of what the early pioneers called a
"sea of grass". If you view the prairie in August, with the strong Kansas
wind blowing across unbroken horizon of tall grass, it truly does resemble the
waves of an ocean moving in their ceaseless rhythmic cycle.
While the sod busters set to work turning under the virgin prairie from Illinois, across Iowa, through Missouri and Nebraska, the rocky soil of the Flint Hills thwarted John Deere's plow. The potential to graze cattle here was easy to recognize, however, and soon the Kaw Indians were removed to Oklahoma, and cows moved onto these hills. It is the ranchers who have preserved the Flint Hills. They have learned through the years to mimic the natural prairie fires which used to sweep through these hills. Through the use of prescribed burning and other practices, the prairie is maintained.
And we're still learning. The root of purple cone flower, left, has been discovered to boost the immune system. There is even limited production of this native prairie plant for pharmaceutics industry. Imagine what other amazing discoveries await here.
In
the Fall, the grasses turn auburn, the cottonwood trees along the
creeks turn golden yellow and the sumac turns a brilliant scarlet. All
this in a in a land thought to be devoid of Fall color. In fact, Autumn is
one of the Flatlander's favorite times in the Flint Hills, though I must admit
,the flowers of early summer are a tough act for any landscape to follow.
Even
the smoking barrel of the Kansas Turnpike must yield to the
timeless hills. What can I say about what is at once an abomination and a
necessity? The shortest--and quickest--route from Topeka and Wichita, I've
traveled it many times. It's also one of the worst things to ever happen
to anyone interested in seeing Kansas, especially the Flint Hills. By its
very design, and the idiotic toll pricing structure, travelers are actually
discouraged from leaving the super highway, even briefly.
At least on the Sharpes Creek Road overpass, one can pause to ponder the folly of it all. This is, after all, the route I will take home, and I, too, will soon be one of these faceless high speed travelers.
Just beyond the KTA overpass, I'm greeted by a herd of friendly cows. This is open range, and these naturally curious bovines come to inspect the occasional intruder into their realm. I'm back in Kansas again. The real Kansas which lies just beyond and just out of sight from the four-lane.