The following article first appeared in the Southwest Tribune of April 21, 1938 and is unedited.
I drove oxen from Voorhees in Stevens county to Liberal one day during the fall of 1888,” John L Boles told the Tribune the other day, when he heard a discussion of plans for the celebration of the 50th anniversary of the city. “It was my first trip and there was plenty to observe for the little town was a busy one and the terminus of the Rock Island Railroad.”
He was accompanied by his brother, T.C. Boles, father of Frank Boles of this city. The Boles brothers hitched their yoke of oxen to a wagon and made the trip to Liberal to take to Voorhees, a town in the southern part of Stevens county, some lumber for a farmer who wished to build a barn. The lumber was used material, a part of the old dance hall which was located near the space now occupied by the Owen Dowdy filling station on First Street. The dance hall with its friendly ladies was a busy place during the first few months following the establishment of Liberal. While there was a great rush for town lots in the coming city of the southwest, there were moments when the men desired to get away from the rush of business, and that old dance hall was about the only attraction. Later when the crowds of lot buyers and promoters left, the dance hall was forgotten and the owners concluded to raze the building. After seeing all the sites that the new town afforded the young Boles brothers loaded their wagon with all the lumber that the oxen could pull and started for home. Mr. Boles stated that they stopped at the farm west of the city, where Herbert Brown is farming today, for the noon meal. The brothers went into a corn field and secured enough corn for the oxen. And that field was about the best crop of corn that had been produced in the west or any part of Kansas. The road due west of the city was nothing more than a trail, but the oxen did not need to have a graded road. Oxen travel on one speed only and that could never be known as high speed. When night came the load of lumber was three miles away from Voorhees. The brothers simply slipped the yoke from the oxen and turned them loose to graze the succulent buffalo grass for the evening meal. The brothers walked to their home. The following morning they returned to the load of lumber, "rounded up'' the oxen, adjusted the yoke and the load of lumber was delivered in a few hours.
On the trip home the brothers saw the town of Oak City. Mr. Boles says the hotel building was moved to Liberal in later years and became part of the Carson house on First Street and the hotel was owned by R.R. Rupert for years. The oxen were sold to a party of engineers in 1889. These surveyors were making a ''congressional survey'' of the land in "No Man's Land." The Boles family used horses from that date when coming to Liberal.
The second trip Mr. Boles made to Liberal was in the fall of 1889 when he brought 3,800 pounds of watermelon seed in 2-bushel sacks which was billed to D.M. Perry & Company, Detroit, Michigan. Liberal was the nearest shipping point. Mr. Boles says that Mr. Mullen was the agent, who is remembered for his kindness in preparing the sacks for shipment. Mr. Boles said his knowledge at that time was indeed meager regarding the manner of getting those sacks prepared for shipment.
This shipment of watermelon seed was the first that D.M. Perry & Co. bought from this part of Kansas. Preparing the seed for the famous wholesale seed concern was a task in those days. Mr. Boles had planted a large area to watermelons. When the time came for harvest, the melons were piled into convenient spaces, and all the seeding was done by hand. The melon was simply ripped open with a table knife and the seed was carefully scraped from the meat of the melon into a bucket, and then transferred into a wooden barrel. When all the seed was barrelled, all the seed was washed by hand and then placed on a dry rack. When the seed became dry, they were sacked. Later Monroe Trever introduced the melon crusher and Al E. Blake designed the seed washer which reduced the great amount of hand labor.
The first watermelon seed raised in Western Kansas was grown by L.D. Nash and Al and Warren Farmer, also residents of Stevens County at that time.