Kansas went dry first.
Kansas outlawed alcohol by constitutional amendment in 1880, four decades before the rest of the country followed. For most of the next hundred years, a drink in this state was something you found rather than something you ordered.
Rocks, then a hatchet.
Carrie Nation’s first solo saloon smashing was in Kiowa, Kansas, in the summer of 1900, and she did it with rocks and brickbats. The hatchet came later that year, in December, at the bar of the Carey Hotel in Wichita. That is where she and the hatchet first came together, and that is what made her famous.
She was arrested roughly thirty times over the years that followed. She sold miniature hatchets to pay the fines and fund the crusade.
Leavenworth, without the hatchet.
In March 1901 she came to Leavenworth. She left the hatchet at home and broke nothing. Ferdinando Mella, proprietor of the National Hotel at Fourth and Cherokee, arranged a police escort and accompanied her around town, then rode with her by streetcar out to the Soldiers Home.
The National Hotel stood on Cherokee Street. So does this bar.
She died in Leavenworth on June 9, 1911.
