- 1930s (Part 1 of 10),
The following history of 1930 was created by Mike Pitko in a chronological order. Over the next 10 editions, take a look back at Greenwood County during the 1930s.
The 1930s were remembered in Kansas mostly for three events, drought (mostly in the western third of the state, with this area called “The Dust Bowl,”) high temperatures and the Depression, which lead to many government programs that dealt with high unemployment. Over the next few weeks, there will be references to some of those government programs in this article and other interesting items that appeared in The Eureka Herald, starting with the year 1930. In doing research on this time period and learning what was going on in Greenwood County, I was surprised how many automobile wrecks there were in the county. The reader needs to remember most of the roads were gravel, narrower than today’s roads and the automobile headlights were much weaker. It was also common in almost every weekly paper to have one or more stories about robberies of businesses or homes at night, many with the homeowners at home sleeping.
Kansas license plates starting in 1930 were issued by counties. The counties were numbered in the order of their population. The county identification number appeared on the upper left corner of the license plate. Wyandotte County had number 1, as they had the largest population, followed by Sedgwick and Shawnee Counties. Greenwood County had number 32 on its plate. Greeley County had the smallest population and was given number 105.
The Madison City Council purchased a new fire truck in 1930 completely-equipped for $5,820. The old Ford fire truck had become overloaded with equipment and had difficulty making fire runs on the hill for the last two years.
Through the assistance of Eureka’s old baseball association, which was at one time a part of the Southwestern League, a fund of $2,000 which has been lying idle, was voted to the high school, in February 1930, and used for the purchase of eight acres on East Seventh Street, to be made into an athletic field. (The Southwestern League was a class D minor league professional baseball league that Eureka played in the years 1924 and 1926. These teams were sponsored by local citizens and some of them ran out of money before the season ended and disbanded. The following teams were in the league: Arkansas City Osage, Blackwell Blues, Coffeyville Refiners, Emporia Traders, Enid Harvesters, Eureka Oilers, Independence Producers, Ponca City Poncans, Salina Millers and the Topeka Senators. Eureka played most of its home games at the fairgrounds until the Lions Park baseball field was constructed.)
