The City of Beautiful Maples

Hiawatha bills itself as the City of Beautiful Maples.  In the early 20th century Theodore H. Korthanke planted the seeds from a maple tree in his yard in a nearby vacant lot.  Korthanke then shared the seedlings with anyone in town that wanted one.

I did not take any pictures of the trees, nor did I notice the Korthanke Fountain.  If you look carefully at the top photo you'll see that the maples are well-protected from an invading deer army.

Do you know what is missing in Hiawatha?  Two things. 

First, there is no Main Street.  The primary east-west street is Oregon St., named after the Oregon trail.  The east-west streets north of Oregon are named after Native American tribes who lived north of the trail.  The streets south of Oregon are named after - well, you can figure it out.  The north-south streets are numbered.  There is a Longfellow Street.

Second, there is no ice cream stand.  This was upsetting!  My hopes dwindled when I drove by the abandoned Dairy Queen.  Since when does a small town DQ go out of business?

While I was walking around downtown I asked a couple of teenagers if there was an ice cream stand in town.  I might have well asked if they could direct me to the Brooklyn Bridge.  "Ice cream stand???  No, there's no ice cream stand."  Sadder words have never been uttered.

Disheartened by the lack of ice cream in northeastern Kansas (what did those Pony Express riders eat when they stopped in town?), I continued glumly onward toward St. Joseph.

Comments

[Dane]

Seriously? And they seemed puzzled as to why one might expect an ice cream stand?

Pod people. No other explanation. I hope you torched the town on the way out to clear out the infestation.

[Joe]

I was tempted to sell the rental car and use the proceeds to open my own ice cream stand.

[Jeff]

how depressing, no ice cream!

[Joe]

I guess people go to Casey's or Sonic...

[Stacie]

Hi, I'm actually from Hiawatha. I can see how the fact that our main street is named Oregon may seem a little odd, but I've been in many cities where this is the case (ex. Pittsburg, KS: main street = Broadway). No, there is no ice cream stand, and our Dairy Queen closed around 2005 (almost all of the other Dairy Queens in the area have closed down as well, the closest ones are 35-40 minutes away), however if you were that desperate for ice cream there was still Sonic and McDonalds, or the Frosty Queen in Falls City, NE thirteen miles North. The Korthanke Fountain is located on Oregon St. in between the police department and the fire station, and if you really want to see why we have billed ourselves the City of the Beautiful Maples, come to us in October.