During the Civil War, February 25th, 1864, an industry group got the Kansas legislature to pass a law rendering many of the rivers in the state unnavigable. The ruling was repealed in 1913, one lawmaker calling it¨A crime against the public welfare.¨ Some 70 years later, an industry group got the state government to put a similar prohibition in again — a regulation declaring all the rivers in the state except the Missouri, Kansas and Arkansas legally unnavigable. Without going into the whos and whys, the current mess of regs doesn´t prohibit canoeing or kayaking on the other streams and rivers there, as long as you go down to the courthouse, look up the plat maps, and buy the land on both sides of the river.
Alrighty then, very reasonable, if you´re one of our nation´s 540 billionaires; no Gov´mint Red Tape there. Sorry for the outburst. One of my most inspirational friends used to say: ¨Question Authority¨.
Once upon a time, I did a nine-day canoe trip down the smoky hill river with 18 other people. When there´s enough flow, it is exceptionally scenic, unBELIEVABLY winding, and a harbor for wildlife. The USGS river gauges show 20 CFS today where I canoed it. One day, a friend and I drove 8 miles to the put-in and paddled a canoe 28 miles back to the take-out. My route down the river was completed over several years with 7 trips….but they form a continuous 150 mile path exploring the countryside. Oh, and it´s the longest river in the world that flows strictly on the plains(combined smoky hill river-Kansas River length is 748 river miles).
I wrote a 9,000-word story about the trip my friends and I took down this flatwater river. It´s really archaic, a pen-and-ink illustrated, hand-written river journal. Too 19th century for modern tastes, and hell, we´d need a million-dollar war chest to even start a campaign legalizing the trip. It literally is not politically-correct to paddle the stream.
Sorry for not capitalizing the name of this beautiful river in the heart of my story and in the heart of the state. Kansas can´t capitalize on this best river in the state for paddling(in my opinion), because it´s a banned river, so I can´t capitalize the spelling and encourage people to go. It´s a forbidden river.