One of the biggest towns in this part of the Great Plains, Garden City (pop. 28,451) is best known for its huge public swimming pool: 337 feet by 218 feet, with over 2.5 million gallons of water. It’s south of US-50 at the end of 4th Street, near the Arkansas River in Finnup Park, and it’s free! Next to the swimming pool is a small historical museum and the nice Lee Richardson Zoo (620/276-1250), with rhinos, elephants, giraffes, and zebras; it’s free for people on foot, but costs $3 for a drive-thru tour.
North of the zoo in the brick-paved downtown, which unlike many places shows few signs of businesses fleeing to the highway frontages, you can window-shop (or even buy something) at the department stores and antique shops, see a movie at the classic State Theatre on Main Street, or get a bite to eat at cafés like Herb’s Hamburgers (620/276-8021; good burgers!) at 110 W. Kansas Avenue or Traditions Sodas and Sandwiches (620/ 275-1998) at 121 Grant Avenue, a block west of Main. The classic Windsor Hotel downtown is a hotel no longer, but after its construction in 1886 this “Waldorf of the Prairies” drew lots of cowpoke-luminaries, including Buffalo Bill Cody.
Garden City also supports the usual gas stations, motels, and fast food, but, best of all, the 4,000-acre State Buffalo Preserve, which may be viewed along the west side of US-83, south of town for about five miles.
Farther south, across the often dry-as-a-bone Arkansas River, oil pumps languidly dip their heads. This is where the stereotypical Kansas landscape comes in: either stark desolation or—thanks to money and modernity—vast irrigation efforts. Prior to the advent of reliable irrigation from the Ogalala Aquifer, over-eager farmers almost ruined the region’s fortunes plowing up the fragile buffalo grass for a one-season crop, before the wind blew the topsoil away. The hills that stood here prior to the Dust Bowl are gone completely now, and the landscape is endless, see-forever plains, marked by grain elevators a deceptive 10 miles away.
Garden City stands at the junction of US-83 and coast-to-coast US-50, The Loneliest Road in America.
