Miami, OK

Sandy and set off from our hotel in Joplin headed towards Miami, OK.  Enjoying the attractions along the way we also made three side trips to the George Washington Carver National Monument, Brutus the worlds second largest drag line, and the point where three states meet, Missouri, Kansas and Oklahoma.

The southeastern corner of Kansas and the northwestern corner of Oklahoma is all about baseball.  In Baxter Springs, KS, there are two substantial Little League complexes.  One field has grandstand and bleacher seating completely encircling the field.  They also have a Little League Museum.  It’s not surprising then, that from this area came a slugging centerfielder named Mickey Mantle.  Growing up in the tiny home of a zinc mining father he started playing baseball, like every other boy in Commerce Oklahoma, at an early age.  By the time he was in high school he was playing semi-pro ball for the Baxter-Springs Whiz Kids.  A Yankee  scout saw him, waited for him to graduate from high school, and signed him.  The rest we all saw on television. Again, driving through this town, seeing a kid coming out of a what was a modest home for even this modest town, would you know you were looking at the boy that would become the man that dominated baseball for a decade.  

 Other sights along the way.

The Supertam Ice Cream shop so named to keep out copyright infringements: lawyers sheesh!

Big Brutus, claimed to be the second largest dragline in the world (sixteen stories high) plus it shares a name with the best college mascot in the nation.

Rainbow Bridge;  originally there were three of these concrete arch bridges on Kansas’ thirteen miles of “Route 66”.  Two have been destroyed and replaced.  This one, preservation activists are determined to keep intact.  So far, so good. 

The Coleman Theatre is the hands-down showpiece of Miami, Oklahoma.  Built in 1929, it was designed as an Italianate building but changed to a Spanish Mission Style in the midst of construction, resulting in a style all its own.  It opened just six months before the commencement of the Great Depression yet it has operated continuously as a theater for performing arts ever since.

More interesting pictures from the road.