Historical society head lists park's improvements, programs, plans for the future

Dressed in period clothing, Mound City Historical Society volunteer Kerry Morrell leads a group of Prairie View Middle School students from Montgomery's Cabin at the society's park down to the Little Sugar Creek last October. Students wearing blindfolds were meant to simulate escaped slaves on the Underground Railroad making the walk in darkness. Historically, escapees waded through the creek to throw off any search dogs that might be following them. (Photos by Roger Sims / Linn County Journal)

By Charlene Sims, Journal staff

LCJeditor@icloud.com

MOUND CITY – Ron Nickelson, president of the Mound City Historical Society, met with the Linn County Commission on Monday, June 8, to thank commissioners for their financial assistance and to update them on the the park.

Nickelson said that he had two purposes in meeting with the commissioners. The first purpose was to thank them for the financial support given to the museums and the society’s park. Purpose number two was to inform the commissioners about what has been accomplished at the park and where it is headed in the future.

“Just so you know that you are not wasting your money,” Nickelson said.

Nickelson told the commissioners that the organization has raised and spent approximately $200,000. That money has been used on all new roofs on the park’s structures and all buildings have been painted. He said that major repairs have been made to the log cabins and new sidewalks and other items have been added there.

“Also we have installed stations with the QR codes outside of each building providing over your cell phone the history of each particular building there,” he said. “Also, in addition, we’ve relaid the railroad tracks in front of the depot with new bed and new ties. I did not know anything about railroading, but I learned quite a bit about that. That’s not an easy job.”

"For the future, our intention is to convert the northeast corner of our property down there where the city pump station is to a parking lot and I’ll explain why in just a little bit. And we’ll make that an entry point to our park.The exciting part is is that we know where we are headed. Our county and city history of involvement in the Underground Railroad is and will be our focus, we hope, for the future.”                                                                         

The signs posted by many of the Mound City Historical Park's buildings have a QR code that allows visitors to take a virtual tour on their mobile devices. The signs and tour videos were created by Mat Casner of Mound City-based Redlogic.

“Presently here’s how it is developing,” he told the commissioners. “Last fall in 2025 we developed and implemented an educational program focused on fifth- and sixth-graders around the Underground Railroad and the Mine Creek Battlefield. We made this available to schools in the area in hopes of growing this program.

“Here are the results of this past school year going back to the fall of 2025 and the first part

of 2026. We brought 325 students into Mound City from the following schools: Paola, Prairie View two times, Parker, Yates Center, Altoona, Fort Scott Christian Heights school and 35 from the Johnson County homeschool program.

“And where Mine Creek fits into this, we have workers for each. We developed the Underground Railroad. We have a program for that and we have a program for Mine Creek. And when we bring a school in, say Paola had 120 students and we split them up. We took care of 60 of them down at the park and 60 of them over at Mine Creek and they spent a two to three hour period at each one and then we split them. We bus them (they had their own buses) and then we exchange (locations).

“It takes 24 people to put on the program that we have. Consequently, when we have that many and in order to get the buses off of Main Street that’s why we went to do the parking lot

on the northeast corner of the property so there is a place for the buses. We’ve been using the Catholic church parking lot and their fellowship hall as part of the program.”

Nickelson continued saying that put 120 students crossing Main Street/Kansas Highway 52. So for safety purposes as well as practicality he said the society wants a parking lot on the north side of the street.

“So our goal each school year, September through May, is to serve 500 students,” said Nickelson. “If we can achieve that within four years and this is where I can see it might begin to pay off.  If we can achieve that in four years, we will have exposed 2,000 students and teachers to our community and county.                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                           

“And if their experience is good, and we have evaluations from teachers, and at some point in time those students will bring their parents back down here, and that’s what we’re after. We’re after the long term.”

Nickelson said that they were reaching out farther for participants to attend the program.

He said, “We think what we are doing will eventually be good for the county. We’re already on the National Register for the Underground Railroad. So that means we should, at some point in time, start drawing people that’s following the Underground Railroad. We know we need signage. We’ve got a lot of things to do. We’ve got a lot of plans. It just takes time and money and people.”