Tuesday, March 09, 2021
Painting for a purpose
KSHS has added a sketchbook from Henry Worrall, famous for 'Drouthy Kansas'. The sketches vary in completeness. Worrall did an unusually good job on fire and smoke and sky, which are hard to get right. Not so good on people and animals. His buffalo look like big pigs.
Worrall worked for the Santa Fe during the time when he did these sketches, and some of them are commercial or engineering drawings.
This page shows both. The top picture is propaganda for the railroad to attract settlers from the East. It shows how a farm on the plains can grow and prosper quickly, while a farm in Vermont forest had to be slowly carved out. Basically true, unless the prairie land was infertile. The lower picture is an engineering sketch of an irrigation canal one mile west of Garden City.
The same area is still irrigated, now using giant radial spray systems.
Western Kansas is measured in circular miles, not square miles.
¶ 9:08 AM 
Western Kansas is measured in circular miles, not square miles.
¶ 9:08 AM
