Family artifacts include one very old "photo" showing a ground clearing blast that we've been unable to identify with certainty. "Pencil" markings indicate a rather large "load," (perhaps "500(?) barrels of" (?) some kind of blasting material?) and appear to make reference to a railroad. Unfortunately whoever made the notations used a red pencil, and the "black background" on which it is written separates into "mostly red" so it's impossible to pull up anything but tiny fragments of the description.

Another photo shows "Engineers of ?" with the remainder decomposed (blasted off?). The second pic is an "office scene" but except that one of the "engineers" is holding a pencil they could have been almost any bandit gang from the time. (You had to have a really old hat to be a railroad engineer back then, apparently?)

Some newspaper reports from the 1890 - 1898 era in the region indicate railroad construction in the area that's probably the only explanation for why my ancestors had the photos. Apparently even out on the flats in Kansas any construction was a spectator event, and the pics were probably just souvenirs passed out to keep the unruly mob out of the blast zones.

The newspaper reproductions do indicate that even then they knew that "Railroads will always be bandits" or something of the sort. The politics were "intense" - and some of the participants had lots of blasting stuff(?).

John