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2009-11-21

2009-11-18

2009-11-05

Agriculture

Lifestyles

Wednesday, November 04, 2009 10:40 AM

Kansas Profile: Ernie Poe -- Barbed wire in Wallace County

By Ron Wilson, Huck Boyd National Institute for Rural Development at Kansas State University

"Look, there's a buffalo, a coyote, horses, and a roadrunner." It sounds like a zoo, but this is a museum. The animals I described are all made of barbed wire. These are barbed wire sculptures of animals, part of a remarkable museum in rural Kansas.

Ernie Poe is a volunteer with the Fort Wallace Museum in Wallace, Kansas, which we learned about last week. Ernie is the artist who created these barbed wire sculptures.

Ernie ran cattle and a construction company. Back in the 1960s, he started collecting samples of various kinds of barbed wire.

When the museum built a new display building, Ernie's company helped put it up. He agreed to display his barbed wire in the building, and it now displays samples of 800 different kinds of patented barbed wire.

But after putting up the display, Ernie called his wife and said, "This won't work. It's just too monotonous." So they had the idea of asking a Girl Scout to paint a desert mural as background to enliven the display, which she did.

Then his wife was leafing through an Arizona Traveler magazine and she saw a life-size roadrunner built of antique barbed wire. She suggested to Ernie that he build one of those to go with the mural. Ernie said, "I've fought that darn wire all my life, I don't want to play with it anymore." But, he said with a smile, "I lost that argument."

So Ernie fashioned a roadrunner out of barbed wire, and people liked it so much that they wanted more. He sold his construction business in 2000 and now builds barbed wire sculptures in his spare time.

When a woman donated harness to the museum, she wanted Ernie to hang it for her. When he said it wouldn't look good just hanging on the wall, she said, "Well, if you can build a roadrunner, you can build a horse." So Ernie made two life-size barbed wire horses to display the harness.

Now the museum displays a barbed wire coyote, lizards, pig, birds, and a pair of oxen. The blacksmith shop shows a barbed wire horse getting shod by a barbed wire farrier. Ernie made a barbed wire jayhawk, which he balanced by making a barbed wire wildcat.

In front of the museum on a three-foot-tall platform is a barbed wire buffalo, which required two miles of barbed wire to create.

Ernie has built some 200 barbed wire sculptures and has more on order. He started doing this sculpting at age 73, which makes him the Grandma Moses of barbed wire.

Ernie has long been civically active, serving as mayor of the Wallace County seat, the rural community of Sharon Springs, population 811 people. Now, that's rural.

The museum features many other interesting stories, such as Duane Frasier who owns a ranch of which it is said that the first five owners died with their boots on.

Another person with a Wallace County connection was Fred Harvey. Harvey migrated from England at age 15 and worked in New York restaurants before coming west on the railroad during the 1870s. As a freight agent, he found the railroad food was lousy, so he opened a cafe in Wallace. He then sold the cafe to help finance a chain of restaurants along the Santa Fe railroad line so travelers could disembark for a good quality meal. His restaurants were called Harvey Houses, and were the first chain restaurants ever. His waitresses were called Harvey Girls. They were selected by Mrs. Harvey for attractiveness and wholesomeness. The chain had great success for many years.

Fred Harvey's story and many others are chronicled in this beautiful museum.

"Look, there's a buffalo, a coyote, horses, and a roadrunner." This is no zoo. It's part of the interesting heritage of Wallace County, displayed at the Fort Wallace Museum. We salute Ernie Poe for making a difference by sharing his handicraft while honoring the history and heritage of the county.

And there's more. Wallace County includes the highest point in the entire state of Kansas, and we'll learn about that in next week's Kansas Profile.

The mission of the Huck Boyd National Institute for Rural Development is to enhance rural development by helping rural people help themselves. For more information about the Huck Boyd Institute, interested persons can visit http://www.ksre.ksu.edu/huckboyd/

K-State Research and Extension is a short name for the Kansas State University Agricultural Experiment Station and Cooperative Extension Service, a program designed to generate and distribute useful knowledge for the well-being of Kansans. Supported by county, state, federal and private funds, the program has county Extension offices, experiment fields, area Extension offices and regional research centers statewide. Its headquarters is on the K-State campus, Manhattan.

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Kansas Profile: Ernie Poe -- Barbed wire in Wallace County

By Ron Wilson, Huck Boyd National Institute for Rural Development at Kansas State University

E-mail this story to a friend | Print this article | Enjoy the convenience of home delivery of The Ottawa Herald.

E-mail this story to a friend | Print this article |
Enjoy the convenience of home delivery of The Ottawa Herald.