En route to Longmont, Colorado, I pulled over for gas and other sustenance in Wilson, Kansas.
Hi, ho! A giant egg!
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| Giant Czech egg in Wilson, Kansas. April 2023. Credit: Mzuriana. |
And no worries, I took more photos of this good egg from different angles and distances, in case you yearned for same. Wilson, in fact, claims that its egg is the world's largest Czech egg:
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| Giant Czech egg in Wilson, Kansas. April 2023. Credit: Mzuriana. |
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| Giant Czech egg in Wilson, Kansas. April 2023. Credit: Mzuriana. |
There was more visual evidence of Wilson as the "Czech Capital of Kansas:"
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| Czech heritage acknowledgement in Wilson, Kansas. April 2023. Credit: Mzuriana. |
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| Czech heritage acknowledgement in Wilson, Kansas. April 2023. Credit: Mzuriana. |
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| Czech heritage acknowledgement in Wilson, Kansas. April 2023. Credit: Mzuriana. |
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| Czech heritage acknowledgement in Wilson, Kansas. April 2023. Credit: Mzuriana. |
The giant egg puts me in mind of the Big Alaskan Road Trip that my daughter, Kit, and I took back in the 90s, which Kit deemed the trip of "Buttes and Big'uns," thanks to the many "largest in the world ..." roadside attractions we visited, in addition to the countless buttes in the northern plains.
But I digress. Below is Wilson's historic opera house, undergoing restoration:
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| Historic opera house undergoing restoration. Wilson, Kansas. April 2023. Credit: Mzuriana. |
So why the hell did the Czechs land in Wilson?
They came to build the railroads, back in the 1870s. They left their homes in Europe because of poverty, for the most part. American railroad companies even advertised in Czech papers about the opportunities to be found in the American plains.
Also, early Czech arrivals to Kansas wrote back home about the opportunities in Kansas for work and land. Some Czechs, already in the US, simply migrated west from the American east.
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