It was early spring as we drove through the main intersection of Lawrence, Kansas. We banged a right onto Massachusetts Street, named by the abolitionist “New England Emigrant Aid Society” in 1854.
I learned how to drive on the original Mass Ave, near my home in Boston. We drove much faster and were wicked less polite, but I felt more copacetic with Kansas.
Free state advocates from Massachusetts sent immigrants to Lawrence to tip the voting scales when Kansas decided whether to enter the union as a non-slavery state in 1861.
In 1863, Proslavery partisans organized by William Quantrill with the likes of a young Jesse James from Missouri raided the city, burning 180 buildings and murdering 182 men and boys on these very streets. The Lawrence Massacre was a seminal moment of Bleeding Kansas” that evolved into the Civil War.
These days, Lawrence is a charming college town that blends the traditional and new, similar to my home in Northampton, MA. With students come coffee shops, eclectic boutiques, cool international restaurants, music, breweries, antique and clothing stores, quirky ideas, and a smattering of old hippies. Someone described it as a “blue dot in an otherwise red state.”
Here are a few tips on what to do, where to stay, and what to eat in Northeast Kansas.
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