From the Alvin and Rosalie Sara Check studio, PBS Kansas Presents Positively Kansas, It's Time for Positively Kansas, coming up at a time when AI and social media seem to be taking over.

You go back in time to investigate the original social network that recorded daily life in permanent ink long before the smartphone, also a powerhouse, reawakens.

We feel the thundering jolt of adrenaline as a legendary roller mill reclaims the Smoky Valley.

Let's step into the heart of the Lost Empire to discover an ancient civilization and a world class secrets buried beneath the Kansas wheat.

AD we witness a real life body snatcher in action to see the creepy crawly horror story that inspired a Hollywood classic.

Isaiah Scott.

Join us for a half hour of information and inspiration right now on Positively Kansas.

And.

Kansas has always been a place where neighbors share ideas and build community.

Today, much of that happens on a screen, but in the 1800s, the printed page was a way to stay connected.

Chris Frank visits an old Cowtown museum to show us how newspapers were actually the original social media, forging the frontier bonds that defined the early prairie.

You recognize this scene people regularly scrolling their social media feeds, catching up on the latest postings.

Today's social media connects people instantly, but of course, Kansas pioneers didn't have that instant connection.

They relied on newspapers to share news, debate ideas and build community.

Well, it was one of the few ways that people had to communicate with each other.

Just person to person, apart from meeting in person.

Of course, it was a way to speak with people who you might not even know yet who you hadn't met.

You could send in letters asking for information, and people would correspond back and forth with each other, essentially through the newspaper.

Elizabeth Ernst is a historical interpreter at Old Cowtown Museum.

She and other interpreters have researched early newspaper interactions among Kansans, especially in the newspaper called Kansas Farmer.

The statewide publication served farmers trying to adapt their methods to an unfamiliar and often unpredictable region, so newspapers like The Kansas Farmer were a way for people to share information about farming techniques that had worked well for them, pose questions to each other about difficulties with their having reading about what was working for other farmers was critical.

After all, the Sunflower State sod had never been turned over before pioneers arrived.

This was years before Kansas State University extension agents were in local communities, connecting farmers with recent research on what did and didn't work.

Newspapers covered everything from international news to, things like sharing crafts and recipes.

Talking about the fashions of the time, that's one thing that really kind of surprised me was that even a agricultural newspaper like The Kansas Farmer, that's very specific to farming techniques, also has sections on things like fashion that these were still things that were important to people, that people wanted to know about.

Sections on things about fashion, she says.

Well, think about how often fashion and fads come up on today's social media and how those are debated.

It was no different.

In the late 1800s, newspapers, including those in Kansas, posted about an emerging women's hairstyle of letting hair fall on the forehead, what we might simply call bangs.

Back then, critics called it idiot fringe and lunatic fringe.

One of my favorite articles that I found is one called Idiot Fringe, and it is cautioning parents against allowing their kids to cut their hair into bangs, saying that, training the hair forward will have a permanent disfiguring effect on their children, that it will create shorter foreheads, which will make them look less intelligent.

The argument hair trained forward would somehow train the mind downward.

The moralists then compared the look to the way prison convicts and those in asylums hair was cut, hence the harsh names given to them.

In 1879, Kansas Farmer newspaper with the headline idiot Fringe implied combing the hair down will result in a race of women with low, idiotic foreheads.

That was a common theme that came up a lot.

Newspapers then, like social media, now often printed what may seem trivial, but simply let people know what their neighbors were up to.

The tri weekly nationalists in 1893 writes Welcome Wills is having a new chimney built on his house.

It's front page with Mrs.

Pat O'Rourke is recovering from a slight attack of malarial fever and posting of others in town for doctor's treatments.

Compare those with today's social media postings about ailments and operations.

Posters are going through newspapers.

We're very similar to a community message, message boards or Facebook.

For one thing, it's very interesting to look between issues and see people talking to each other.

And just like in today's social media, those exchanging newspaper postings on the subject get upset when it seemed there was nothing to be upset about.

I think it goes to show that if people now feel like we're overly sensitive, that that tendency to misunderstand each other in writing goes back a long way.

You found it in.

Yes, I found it all the way back in 1879.

Any hard feelings had to give way to ways to survive in this young state and new cities being settled.

There was definitely an identity that emerged specifically in people who had made this decision and made this big journey out into Kansas or other other states in the West, and local leaders knew they needed newspapers then to help promote or boom their towns.

Newspapers were hugely important to life in frontier communities like this one.

That's one of the reasons why one of the first things that, was done by the town developers in Wichita was recruiting, Marshall Murdock from Burlingame, Kansas, to relocate here to start a promotional newspaper.

Those papers, with their farm reports, fashion debates and front porch announcements, became the glue that held early Kansas communities together.

This is Chris Frank, positively Kansas Old Cowtown Museum historical interpreters are researching the old newspapers to give visitors a better understanding of what life was really like in the Kansas Pioneer days, and 19th century powerhouse just shot a jolt of adrenaline through the Smoky Valley in Lynchburg.

The 1898 rolling mills recently shook off a year of silence to remind the prairie that true strength doesn't need a microchip.

It's the annual Thunder of Mill Fest, where the heartbeat of the frontier finally breaks its silence.

With its colorful and unique history, Lynchburg is a busy town throughout most of the year, attracting tourists from all over America.

But on the first Saturday of each May, it really comes alive with Mill Fest, a celebration of Lindbergh's agricultural roots and Swedish heritage.

There's so much to see and do here, including touring the Smoky Valley Roller Mill, also known as the Lindbergh Old Mill.

We were among the hundreds and hundreds of lucky folks to witness this amazing engineering feat, constructed in 1898.

When the town's founders settled here in 1869, they knew they needed a way to take advantage of Kansas wheat.

Pretty quickly, they figured out, we need a mill along the Smoky Hill River.

Because we need to process our flour, our processor grain, and we need a nice, lumber mill to start building houses.

Now, this mill was actually Lindbergh's third to be constructed.

The first two were destroyed by flood and fire.

The mill is maintained throughout the year.

Throughout the decades, volunteers have put in countless hours to make sure it continues to run.

A few days before Mill Fest, the machines are thoroughly oiled and the belts carefully checked.

Most everything you see here is original equipment.

Leather belting is rare, and it is probably the most fragile thing in there, and it's amazing to me of how much still is the original melting.

What's also amazing is that at one time there were 400 mills like this one just in Kansas.

Today there are just three historical mills in the entire country.

The Smoky Valley River mill, which ceased operations in 1955, is the only one of its kind in the Midwest.

But even when the more modern mills started taking over, they retained many characteristics of original facilities.

We call it the granddaddy of the modern mill, because if you go into a currently active mill, you will see the ancestry, this is the great grandfather of every place that we get flour today.

Corbin Baldwin, who moved to Lynchburg just a few weeks before the 2026 Mill Fest, was on our tour.

He's a design engineer working in agriculture, so he has deep appreciation for those who constructed the mill.

Today we can run a motor and a shaft for each piece of equipment, and it's a very simple design.

You know, the components are expensive, but simple.

Whereas here they have one common shaft, and they have to figure out and be creative, very creative about how to make the entire facility run.

Corbin also telling us how glad he was to take the in-person tour, a much more meaningful experience than looking at something on the screen and being able to feel the vibrations in the floor and hear the belts clack as they roll over their Shivs I think can just kind of awaken things and different people and, show them to a world that, that they might not have seen if, if we were just, viewing things on the internet next door to the mill.

Meanwhile, you'll find the Swedish Heritage Museum, which is full of Lynchburg history.

The town is, of course, known as Little Sweden.

And that's because immigrants from the Farmland province settled here, creating a community focused on agriculture, religion and education, touring the mill and the museum, though, is just part of the mill fest fun across the street.

There's a whole lot more to see and do.

Vintage tractors and 1800 schoolhouse and another section of the Swedish Heritage Museum are just a few of the attractions.

There's also animals to check out.

With such a great turnout every year, Mill Fest fills Lynchburg residents with tremendous pride.

It feels good and I get to talk to so many people from all over.

I mean, we have people come as well for different things, but then they're from all over the country in Lynchburg, I'm Anthony Powell for Positively Kansas.

The Lynchburg Old Mill Museum is Swedish Heritage Museum on East Mill Street remains open year round.

For tours, you can step inside the one room schoolhouse and permanent exhibits to discover the grit that built the Kansas frontier.

Now to the untamed world of the wild.

In this week's Kansas Wild Edge, we go beyond the beauty of the prairie to witness a real life body snatcher in action.

Fair warning this week's Kansas Wild Edge is not for the faint of heart.

In Bambi land, the natural world is a harmonious place.

Disney would have you and me and the kiddos believe that animal societies all work together for a tranquil kingdom full of love, fun and understanding.

If you like, you could eat a cupcake and dream alone.

But real life is different.

I'm fascinated by large and beautiful caterpillars that eventually fly as colorful butterflies and moths.

If benign and gentle creatures deserve safe passage, then these would live in peace.

But hold on.

While filming white lion snakes larvae today I saw raw nature.

This giant eating machine seldom threaten their host plants, in this case four point evening primrose scattered by their mother while depositing single eggs here and there.

They have little feeding impact on their wild flower benefactors.

But to kind of flies crash, the party, the tiny white speck seen here may seem harmless, but their eggs of this voracious fly parasitoid, if you can take it, keep watching.

Otherwise, turn on Disney Plus.

Here's what really happens.

When to kind of detect many kinds of insect.

A female fly finds a host and starts to work.

A tobacco horn worm senses imminent danger and writhes vigorously to discourage its tormentor.

But the fly is relentless.

Sooner or later, the outcome is sure.

The fly lands again and again, laying an egg each time.

It's the same with every species.

And finally, when the deed is done, she leaves attached.

Eggs hatch and tiny maggots burrow beneath the skin.

At first, not much changes.

The baby flies eat their host from the inside out as it continues to live and feed, but the maggots get bigger and start to affect the caterpillar's organs.

The caterpillar gets sick and stops feeding, and the flies continue to grow and eat.

Their living host.

They finally kill their victim.

By then they are mature and ready to change to adult.

Sometimes they exit a corpse.

Sometimes a still living host.

Then they burrow out and drop to pupate in the soil.

Either way, it can't survive.

It's a grisly scene for a praying mantis or a monarch butterfly.

Or a fallen horned worm.

After a week or so, new flies emerge from the soil made and look for more victims.

It's their job.

Gnarly.

But it's the real stuff.

And it happens all the time.

I'm Mike Blair for Positively Kansas.

If that felt like a Hollywood thriller, well, you aren't far off.

This ruthless survival strategy is exactly what inspired the terrifying creatures in the movie aliens on the Kansas Wild Edge.

The truth is officially scarier than fiction.

While many local museums look back a century or so, the city of Lions is guarding the secrets of a millennium.

We're diving into the heart of a lost empire to uncover an ancient civilization and the world class relics buried beneath the wheat.

Jim Crow unlocks the mystery of the prairies.

First civilization.

With.

In Lyons, Kansas, the grand, stately 1910 courthouse stands as a lasting symbol of the European settlement of Rice County.

Just a block away at the County museum, displays on the bottom floor reflect what are traditionally considered the early days of civilization here in Kansas.

That's the late 1800s and early 1900s.

But walk up a few steps to the main floor.

And you'll learn about an advanced civilization that occupied this area hundreds of years before the Europeans ever arrived.

They were remarkable because they lived in small villages, villages, maybe containing, 20 to 50 huts like you see here in the museum.

They dug their huts down, in the ground, so it would be warm in winter and cool in summer.

They were very efficient group of Native Americans.

One is now identified as Quivira.

Was the province or territory of the ancestral Wichita Indians.

It included three areas of settlement in what is now Rice County, in McPherson County, and in Cowley and Butler counties.

They have a complex culture.

Charlene Akers, who is executive director of the Coronado Quivira Museum, has a good way of putting the size and success of Quivira in perspective.

There were probably 20,000 plus people there until today.

In Rice County, there's less than 10,000 people.

Much of what's known about these people has been pieced together here over the past 150 years.

Long after Quivira vanished as they were plowing their fields.

Homesteaders would find the artifacts and they would collect them once again, putting them in boxes, not knowing much about them.

Along with the native American items that were turning up here, there were artifacts that appeared to come from Spanish conquistadors.

Archeologist Don Blakeslee says these discoveries helped solve an age old mystery surrounding the route taken by Spanish explorer Francisco Vazquez de Coronado, who led the first European expedition ever through what is now the southwestern U.S.. The understanding of where Coronado went really started in Rice County.

There were, two brothers.

They ran the newspaper, the Jonas Brothers, back in the 1920s, who got interested in the archeology and pretty quickly figured out this must be where Coronado went.

And they were.

They were right.

And their work grew in the Smithsonian beginning in the 1940s and led to some major excavations there.

And people have continued the interest all along.

Blakeslee has inventoried the museum's entire collection of 50,000 quivering objects.

That's the largest such collection in the world.

My favorite one would be the small case that we had just inside the door.

It contains and bone.

And you ask people, what do you think the bone is used for?

And that bone has notches on it.

Well, if you're Doctor Blakeslee to explain what it was, and, it is a musical instrument.

Other fascinating finds include tattoo needles.

The Wichita were known for their the men for their tattoos that, went from their eyes back to their ears and may have surrounded the eyes.

That's not clear.

But it was a distinctive marking of their group.

Some of the artifacts are native to other tribes in other regions of the continent.

This led to the discovery that these people were traders.

They would walk hundreds of miles to exchange goods.

Well, there is primary.

This tree was buffalo.

They were producing bison products for the southern United States, is what it boils down to.

It is believed that residents of Quivira produced the buffalo horns that ended up in what is now Florida.

Blakeslee says they also altered their environment somehow, replacing the land's tall grass with short grass to better feed their buffalo herds.

The tall grass started growing again only after the wolverines were run off by the Europeans.

They were curious that they talked to their neighbors, that they traveled, that they some of them, not all of them, gathered empirical information about their environment and tried to figure out what the heck was going on.

Are there equivalent of our scientists?

They were far more like us in many, many ways than, than people imagine.

There is so much more you can learn about Quivira and the Wichita people, and actual visit to the Coronado Quivira Museum in Lyons is a great place to start in Lyons for Positively Kansas.

I'm Jim Gray.

World class treasures, ancient empires, and a legacy that defies the centuries.

The Coronado Quivira Museum is proof that the prairie holds more secrets than we ever imagined.

Well, that's a wrap for this week.

Now that federal funding has been taken away and our PBS Kansas budget dramatically cut, we need to decide which programs to keep and which ones to cancel.

If you'd like to see Positively Kansas remain on the air, you can go to CPT Dawg and make a $100 donation to help keep the show funded as a thank you.

Your name will soon appear at the start and end of the show each week.

As a valued supporter.

I volunteer to host the show without pay because I believe these stories we share each week are important and help bring us all together as Kansans.

Isaiah Scott.

Thanks for watching.

See you next time.