Instruct: Given a question, retrieve passages that answer the question.
Query: Is there really a yellow brick road in Kansas?
The actual road is believed to be one in Peekskill, New York, where L. Frank Baum attended Peekskill Military Academy. According to a local legend, the Yellow Brick Road was derived from a road paved with yellow bricks near Holland, Michigan, where Baum spent summers. Ithaca, New York, also makes a claim for being Frank Baum's inspiration. He opened a road tour of his musical, The Maid of Arran, in Ithaca, and he met his future wife Maud Gage Baum while she was attending Cornell University. At the time, yellow bricks paved local roads. Yellow brick roads can also be found in Aberdeen, South Dakota; Albany, New York; Rossville (Baltimore County), Maryland; Montclair, New Jersey (Parkhurst Place and Afterglow Way); Bronxville, New York (on Prescott and Valley roads); Chicago, Illinois; Liberal, Kansas; Sedan, Kansas and Chittenango, New York, as well as a school in Abington, Pennsylvania, and abroad in Sofia, Bulgaria.
In 1982, the village installed a brick sidewalk on either side of the downtown portion of Genesee St. which was painted yellow as an homage to the yellow brick road from the novels and film. The sidewalk required regular upkeep as the color would fade over time and the bricks would chip and crack due to the freeze-thaw cycles in the colder months and regular use throughout the year. As part of a downtown Chittenango revitalization project in 2007, the sidewalks were replaced with concrete which was then stamped and colored to replicate the yellow brick road. The old bricks have been made available to purchase at the All Things Oz museum and during the festival to raise money for the town's festival. In 2017, the village also added a yellow brick road sidewalk to Dr. West memorial park where the annual Oz-stravaganza festival is held.
Beginning in the 1820s, the area that would become Kansas was set aside as Indian Territory by the U.S. government, and was closed to settlement by whites. The government resettled to Indian Territory (now part of Oklahoma) those Native American tribes based in eastern Kansas, principally the Kansa and Osage, opening land to move eastern tribes into the area. By treaty dated June 3, 1825, 20 million acres (81000 km²) of land was ceded by the Kansa Nation to the United States, and the Kansa tribe was limited to a specific reservation in northeast Kansas. In the same month, the Osage Nation was limited to a reservation in southeast Kansas.
The of railway between Valdosta and Waycross were once the longest straight stretch of railroad in the world. Today highways stretch through the county for miles with hardly a curve, rise, or fall.
The history of the Kansas City metropolitan area started in the 19th century as Frenchmen from St. Louis, Missouri moved up the Missouri River to trap for furs and trade with the Native Americans. The Kansas City metropolitan area, straddling the border between Missouri and Kansas at the confluence of the Kansas and Missouri Rivers, was a strategic point for commerce and security. Kansas City, Missouri was founded in 1838 and defeated its rival Westport to become the predominant city west of St. Louis. The area played a major role in the westward expansion of the United States. The Santa Fe, and Oregon trails ran through the area. In 1854, when Kansas was opened to Euro-American settlement, the Missouri-Kansas border became the first battlefield in the conflict in the American Civil War.
After Kansas became a U.S. state in 1861, the directors of Blue Mont Central College offered the school's three-story building and of its property to the State of Kansas to become the state's university. A bill accepting this offer easily passed the Kansas Legislature in 1861, but was controversially vetoed by Governor Charles L. Robinson of Lawrence, and an attempt to override the veto in the legislature failed by two votes. In 1862, another bill to accept the offer failed by one vote. Finally, on the third attempt, on February 16, 1863, the state enacted a law accepting the college building and grounds, and establishing the state's land-grant college at the site – the institution that would become Kansas State University. Blue Mont Central College ceased operations later that year after the school term was completed.
This area was developed by European-American settlers and their African-American enslaved workers for cotton plantations. Agriculture was critical to the economy into the 20th century. The Cohelee Creek Bridge in the county is the southernmost covered bridge still standing. One of the last wooden flagpoles from the American Civil War era is located at the historic courthouse in downtown Blakely.
I-80 is the Interstate Highway that most closely approximates the route of the historic Lincoln Highway, the first road across the United States. The highway roughly traces other historically significant travel routes in the Western United States: the Oregon Trail across Wyoming and Nebraska, the California Trail across most of Nevada and California, the first transcontinental airmail route, and except in the Great Salt Lake area, the entire route of the First Transcontinental Railroad. From near Chicago east to near Youngstown, Ohio, I-80 is a toll road, containing the majority of both the Indiana Toll Road and the Ohio Turnpike. I-80 runs concurrently with I-90 from near Portage, Indiana, to Elyria, Ohio. In Pennsylvania, I-80 is known as the Keystone Shortway, a non-tolled freeway that crosses rural north-central portions of the state on the way to New Jersey and New York City.
The Rocky Face Fault is a geological fault responsible, in part, for the location of Cumberland Gap at Cumberland Mountain and the Narrows gap at Pine Mountain in the southern Appalachian mountain range. The fact that these two gaps lined up enabled western migration across the Appalachians to Kentucky. Included along the fault are the towns of Middlesboro and Pineville, Kentucky. The fault represents a crack in the Cumberland Overthrust Sheet, one of many remnant resistant strata pushed upwards to the northwest over the neighboring Cumberland Plateau. The fault is named after Rocky Face, a prominent, cliff-lined mountain between Middlesboro and Pineville, Kentucky.
Though the numbers are significant in the context of the times, far more people chose to remain at home in the 31 states. Between 1840 and 1860, the population of the United States rose by 14 million, yet only about 300,000 decided to make the trip. Many were discouraged by the cost, effort and danger of the trip. Western scout Kit Carson is thought to have said, "The cowards never started and the weak died on the way", though the general saying was written by Joaquin Miller, in reference to the California gold rush. According to several sources, 3 to 10 percent of the emigrants are estimated to have perished on the way west.
Hosts
Man o' War Boulevard, named after the racehorse Man o' War, is a 17-mile (27 km) urban arterial, circling Lexington, Kentucky to its south. Its western terminus is at US 60 Versailles Road at Keeneland Race Course's main entrance, from which the highway heads southeast, intersecting with US 68 (Harrodsburg Road), US 27 (Nicholasville Road), and other roads. It then turns east and northeast, intersecting KY 1974 (Tates Creek Road), Alumni Drive, US 25/US 421 (Richmond Road), and I-75, before ending at US 60 (Winchester Road) at Brighton. The majority of the road is a four-lane divided highway with curbs and sidewalks maintained by the Lexington-Fayette Urban County Government, but the 1.429-mile (2.300 km) portion east of I-75 is maintained by the Kentucky Transportation Cabinet as Supplemental Road Kentucky Route 1425 (KY 1425), and only carries two lanes.
In 1859, provisions were written for a state university into the Wyandotte Constitution, under which Kansas became a state in 1861. The first Kansas state legislature, meeting in 1861, passed a bill that would establish the state university in Manhattan, Kansas, using the assets of the existing Blue Mont Central College. But the bill was vetoed by Governor Charles Robinson of Lawrence, and an attempt to override the veto in the Legislature failed by two votes. In 1862, another bill to make Manhattan the site of the state university failed by one vote. Finally, on February 16, 1863, the state accepted Manhattan's offer to donate the Blue Mont College building and grounds and established the state's land-grant college at the site – the institution that would become Kansas State University.
At the same time, 1879-1881, the Atchison, Topeka and Santa Fe Railroad was building across New Mexico and met the Southern Pacific at Deming, New Mexico March 7, 1881, completing the second transcontinental railroad (the first, the central transcontinental, was completed May 10, 1869 at Promontory Summit, Utah). Acquiring trackage rights over the SP, from Deming to Benson, the Santa Fe then built a line southwest to Guaymas, Sonora, Mexico, completed October 1882, as its first outlet to the Pacific. This line was later sold to the Southern Pacific. The Southern Pacific continued building east from El Paso, completing a junction with the Texas & Pacific in December 1881, and finally in 1883, its own southern transcontinental, the Sunset Route, California to New Orleans, Atlantic waters to the Pacific. These railroads caused an early 1880s mining boom in such locales as Tombstone, Arizona, Bisbee, Arizona, and Santa Rita, New Mexico, the latter two world class copper producers. From Bisbee, a third sub-transcontinental was built across the Gadsden Purchase, the El Paso and Southwestern Railroad, to El Paso by 1905, then to a link with the Rock Island line to form the Golden State Route. The EP&SW was sold to the Southern Pacific in the early 1920s.
Michigan State University, Kellogg Biological Station: Eminent Ecologist (1992)
U.S. Highway 136 is a part of the United States Numbered Highway System that runs for between Edison, Nebraska and Speedway, Indiana. It is a spur route of US 36 despite never intersecting its parent. Within the State of Nebraska it is a state highway that begins at a junction with US 6 and US 34 north of Edison and travels east across the southern part of the state to the Nebraska–Missouri state line in Brownville along the banks of the Missouri River. Throughout its length, the highway is known as the Heritage Highway, one of nine scenic byways in the state. The highway travels across the grassland prairies of southern Nebraska to the woods of the Missouri River Valley encountering winding rivers, farmlands, and historic settlements. These landscapes were featured in stories from Pulitzer Prize-winning author Willa Cather recounting life on the Nebraska Plains during the end of the 19th century. For its entire length, US 136 is a two-lane highway with the exception of a stretch of divided highway within Fairbury.
It has also been asserted that there are numerous Tornado Alleys. In addition to the Texas/Oklahoma/Kansas core, such areas include the Upper Midwest, the lower Ohio Valley, the Tennessee Valley and the lower Mississippi valley. Some studies suggest that there are also smaller tornado alleys located across the United States.
The episode follows the construction of the First Transcontinental Railroad, the first transcontinental rail system, which would unite the eastern and western seaboards of the United States. Started in Sacramento by a consortium of local shopkeepers with no experience in building a railroad, the episode follows their efforts to build from west to east through the forbidding Sierra Nevada mountains with the help of Chinese labourers whilst simultaneously following the efforts of the workers of the Union Pacific to build from east to west, and their problems in dealing with the lawless nature of the Wild West, attacks by hostile Indians, and financial corruption and scandal.
The UP reached the town of Cheyenne, which later became the state capital, in 1867. The railroad eventually spanned the entire state, boosting the population, and creating some of Wyoming's largest cities, such as Laramie, Rock Springs and Evanston. The railroad needed coal, which was discovered in quantity in the southwestern part of the state, especially around Rock Springs. In 1885, a murderous riot known as the Rock Springs Massacre broke out when white miners drove out Chinese miners employed by the Union Pacific Coal Company in Rock Springs.
When Kansas was admitted to the United States in 1861, one of the first things the new state Legislature planned to do was to establish a state university. After two years of political wrangling, on February 16, 1863, the state accepted Manhattan's offer to donate the Blue Mont College building and grounds, and established the state's Land-grant university at the site – the institution that would become Kansas State University.
U.S. Route 101, or U.S. Highway 101 (US 101) is a north–south United States Numbered Highway that runs through the states of California, Oregon, and Washington, on the West Coast of the United States. It is also known as (The Royal Road) where its route along the southern and central California coast approximates the old trail which linked the Spanish missions, pueblos, and presidios. It merges at some points with California State Route 1 (SR 1).
In Disney's 1985 live action semi-sequel to the 1939 movie "Return to Oz", Dorothy returns to Oz six months after being sent back home to Kansas from her first visit. Upon her second arrival she finds the yellow brick road in ruins by the hands of the evil Nome King who also conquered the Emerald City. In the end, it is presumed that after she defeats him and saves the city and its citizens, the road is restored as well.
In "Dorothy of Oz", Dorothy, Scarecrow, Tin Man, Cowardly Lion, and China Doll Princess arrive in the Munchkin Village where they meet up with Boq. When Dorothy tells him that Toto is a prisoner of the Jester at Princess Gaylette's castle, Boq tells Dorothy that it has been raining for several months and that much of Munchkin County is underwater enough to put the Yellow Brick Road into a state of disrepair. Boq tells the group that the secret of the Yellow Brick Road involved the Wizard of Oz having the Good Witch of the North use magical ingredients to make it where it had the color of sunlight even when it rains for a short time. Following a break in the storm, Dorothy, Scarecrow, Tin Man, Cowardly Lion, and Boq headed to where Dorothy's house landed when she first arrived in the Land of Oz. While there, the group encounters the Queen of the Field Mice who mentioned that the constant rains have forced the Field Mice out of their burrows and even detect the presence of the Wicked Witch of the East's ghost. After a part of the Yellow Brick Road is put back in place and the Wicked Witch of the East's ghost disappears, the Munchkins and the Field Mice celebrate the spell being broken as Dorothy's group boards Tugg and heads down the Munchkin River once more.
The Yellow Brick Road is an image taken from the 1939 film adaptation of Lyman Frank Baum's "The Wizard of Oz". In that film, Dorothy and her three misfit friends are instructed to follow the yellow brick road in search of the Wizard of Oz, only to find that they had what they were looking for all along. The road leads to the Emerald City in the land of Oz, often referred to as a metaphor for "The road that leads to life's fantasies" or "The road that leads to life's answers." The lyrics describe wanting to go back to a simpler existence after living what the narrator thought was a good life but realizing he has simply been treated like a pet by his rich socialite lover.
The Vision Oz Fund was established in November 2009 to raise funds that will be used to help increase the awareness, enhancement, and further development of Oz-related attractions and assets in Wamego, Kansas. The first fundraiser is underway and includes selling personalized engraved yellow bricks, which will become part of the permanent walkway (aka "The Yellow Brick Road") in downtown Wamego.