First, the name. It’s said that a munificent early settler came and dug a well, and whenever a dusty emigrant would offer money for a drink or the chance to wash his neck, the settler would say, “Water is always free here.” One day the reply came, “That is mighty liberal.” Bob Dole probably wouldn’t approve of the word choice, but the name stuck, and now the town’s stuck with it.
Second, the adjectives: hot, dusty, treeless, flat. The approach into town reveals the drab side of Liberal’s oil, gas (the town lies on the eastern edge of an enormous natural gas field), and meatpacking industries.
But the sights do improve. Honest. There is one significant draw, the top-notch Mid-America Air Museum (daily; $5; 620/624-5263), at 2000 W. 2nd Street, on the site of the old Liberal Army Airfield. It’s one of the largest air museums in the United States and has amassed an astonishingly diverse collection of aircraft covering the entire history of flight, including military fighters and bombers from World War II and the Korean and Vietnam Wars.
Otherwise, there’s a lot of Ozmania in town. Though there’s not even the most tenuous connection between Liberal and the film or the book, apart from them all being set in Kansas, an annual Oztoberfest blowout is held at so-called Dorothy’s House, also known as the Coronado House, (daily; $5; 620/624-7624), a block north of US-54 at 567 E. Cedar Street. This combination historical museum and re-creation of the movie’s Kansas sets displays a mock-up of Dorothy’s bedroom from the movie, a mini–Yellow Brick Road lined by models of the film’s animal heroes, as well as a horse bit from the expedition of Don Francisco Vasquez de Coronado and his troops, who passed through in 1541 searching for the fabled Seven Cities of Cibola.
The city’s most unusual attraction happens annually on Shrove Tuesday (aka Mardi Gras), when it holds its annual, international, soon-to-be-famous Liberal Pancake Race, a competition between local housewives and their counterparts from Olney, England. They race a 415-yard, S-shaped course, each flipping a pancake along the way. The Olney event purportedly dates from 1445, when a woman rushed to church with her pan still in her hand; the Liberal race has taken place since 1950.
US-83 and US-54, which is known as Pancake Boulevard, claim the majority of places to eat and sleep.
