Beaumont Special Event
This special event was added in 2019 to celebrate the rich history of a little ghost town in Butler County called Beaumont, Kansas.
The town is rich with the Beaumont hotel history, Frisco railroad history and yes even a landing strip for airplanes. Small airplanes taxi right up to the Beaumont hotel on city streets made for cars and park in the “bent prop parking area”. Watching the planes come in and taxi is a great way to relax after making several radio contacts or when the bands are down.
On October 19, 2019, we rented out Beaumont’s brand new community center and set up our antennas and radios and conducted a six hour special event using the call sign WØT.
Flint Hills Amateur Radio club will return to the Beaumont Community Center for another special event on Oct. 23, 2021. There is an RV park with full hookups (reserve today). We will join together for dinner at the hotel following the Special Event.
Click on Above Images to Enlarge
Now we would like to tell you a little bit about the Town of Beaumont, Kansas that we think you will enjoy.
Step back, 130 years in time to the last quarter of the nineteenth century when Beaumont, Kansas was a stage coach station at the Beaumont hotel that served travelers traveling from Fredonia, Kansas to Wichita, Kansas. Today the unique little hotel has 3 suites, 8 rooms and two dining rooms – one of which is decorated as a 50’s style diner and a RV park within a few steps from the hotel.
Local lore has it, that in 1948, a Texas cattleman wanted to fly into Beaumont to check on his cattle. He asked the hotel if they would block main street for his landing. Since having an airplane land in Beaumont was exciting, the residents agreed. Well, the pilot told his friends and soon many other aviators were talking about the little Kansas town where you could land and taxi your airplane on the main street. It quickly became a tradition with aviators and a practice for residents to check for airplanes on the streets when driving around the city.
In 1953, the hotel owner, J.C. Squier acquired 70 acres east of the hotel and added a landing strip. Now airplanes could safely land and depart on a Flint Hills pasture rather than one of Beaumont’s streets. Today, aviators travel to Beaumont in their antique biplanes, helicopters, ultra lights, power parachutes, and even hot air balloons! On any given day, you can watch airplanes taxi right up to the hotel and park across the street at the “Bent Prop Aircraft Parking”.
In 1879, Beaumont was established as a railroad town. It became one of the most important shipping points of cattle in the Flint Hills. Beaumont sat atop of a divide that had nearly ten miles of steep grade before cresting the divide. A 25,000 gallon wooden water tower was constructed and there were 7 trains consuming 35 thousand gallons daily. A steam engine alone used approximately 5,000 gallons between Piedmont and Beaumont a distance of 14 miles.
Today the wooden water tower still stands as a tribute to the Frisco railroad and is the only working wooden water tower in the United States. It is on the National historic register.
In 1890, the Frisco Railroad built a roundhouse which had six engine stalls, with pits for inspection and repair of steam engines. At that time, Beaumont was established as the overhaul station between St. Louis and Wichita. The Frisco Railroad employed 90 people and built structures to house operations for coaling locomotives, offices, store rooms, an ice house and a depot. By 1950, shipping of cattle had been taken over by trucks and in 1955, the last steam engine passenger train went through Beaumont. The wooden water tower was the last one used on the mainline of a railroad in the United States.
