Volunteers work to clear damage left by tornado

Volunteers work to cut to clear a path on the Mine Creek Battlefield site south of Pleasanton that had been blocked by trees knocked down by the April 13 tornado. Damage to the trees in the timber was extensive. (Photos by Roger Sims / Linn County Journal)

PLEASANTON – A dozen men armed with chainsaws literally hacked their way into the timber at the Mine Creek Battlefield site on Saturday, April 25. The regular “Park Day” event that draws volunteers to spruce up the site took on new meaning as the group of volunteers were faced with numerous trees fallen across the walking path – stark evidence of the swath left by the April 13 tornado.

A morning’s worth of work saw them clearing about a quarter mile of the path. By afternoon they had reached a place in the trail where two trees had fallen across the path, one tree partially broke about 8 feet up with bent wood making the fallen trunk a potential “widow-maker.”

One of them estimated there was another 300 tree-tangled yards to go to reach the trailhead on the southwest corner of the battlefield. And the path they were cutting was in many places just wide enough for a side-by-side UTV to ease through.

Part of the path the men cut on Saturday ran along the battlefield’s namesake: Mine Creek. a number of the older growth timber had been tossed into or across the creek by the storm. In one area, trees piled up creating a possible logjam that could get worse with more flooding.

The workers said it would likely take some heavy equipment to continue their work by moving trees that were too large or too dangerous to cut.

Three of the men were members of the Mine Creek Battlefield Foundation. The majority, though, were from the Kansas Division of Sons of Confederate Veterans, including the Pvt. Riley Crawford Camp from Baxter Springs and the Major Thomas J. Key Camp from Overland Park. One of the men, a member of the Maj. Thomas R. Livingston Camp, came from Carthage, Mo.

The dozen volunteers working to clear paths from fallen trees poses in front of the tangled mess they worked all day to clear.

The men were quick to point out that some articles written about them identified them as members of a radical fringe group because of their ties to the Confederacy, but they said that was not the case.

The camps of descendants of Confederate veterans who fought at Mine Creek over the past few years have continued to make an impact on the historic battlefield site over the past several years by volunteering to help with the site’s maintenance. They have also built and maintained memorials to their kin who fought and died there.

Aside from the storm damage, one of the workers, Jim Dick, pointed to the pile of brush that sat in a field west of the state’s battlefield visitors center. The piles of smaller trees had been cleared from drainage ditches to restore that section of the battlefield to the way is was in 1864, when Union forces chased down the retreating Confederate troops to fight the largest Civil War battle in Kansas.