New Pioneers in Southwest Kansas

We landed in Dodge City, Kansas, just before the summer solstice. Temperatures hovered in the 90s, and hot wind blew across the prairies keeping the immense wind turbines that populate this land churning day and night. We had flown in our little Cirrus airplane from the south, over the mid-late harvest of the wheat fields, the occasional oil wells, and finally toward the small city (population about 30,000) materializing in the distance.

The real sign that we had arrived in the “beef triangle” of Southwest Kansas came as we taxied to park the plane. I cracked opened the Cirrus door to draw a breeze into the broiling cockpit. The breeze blew in the pungent and unmistakable odor of cattle from the feedlots. “The smell of money,” as one Dodge City resident later remarked.

We were definitely in Kansas, with some learning to do about wild-west history, the beef industry, the majority-Hispanic population, and life on the remote prairie. The nice folks at the family-owned fixed base operator