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"Grand Princess of the Prairie"
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Greenwood Hotel, Eureka.
Photo courtesy of the Greenwood Preservation Society.
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"The lobby of Eureka's largest hotel is a sort of small livestock exchange. There are the same men with broad-brimmed hats and whips that the visitor sees in Kansas City's exchange building in the first floor's corridors. Always they are 'talking cattle.' Ask for proof as to how powerful they are, and the evidence is that when a petition of the Eureka cattlemen for a new railway station went to officials of the Missouri Pacific, work on that station began in less than two weeks. And the Missouri Pacific, it is believed, is not a railroad that is building new depots everywhere that there is a request for one."
- The Kansas City Star, 1911
An estimated one billion dollars worth of cattle was traded in the lobby of the Greenwood Hotel during its heyday. Now the recently restored building is home to Greenwood County: The Social and Economic Story of Kansas, a new exhibition examining the three industries that shaped the county's history: cattle, oil, and transportation. The exhibition was supported by a KHC Humanities grant.
The Greenwood Preservation Society will host an open house and exhibit opening at the Greenwood Hotel on Thursday, June 16th in Eureka. More information about the Greenwood Hotel can be found here. |
