Eight Kansas communities to take part in K-96 June Jaunt

On the first weekend of June, seven counties and eight communities along a 136-mile stretch of K-96 from the Colorado state line to Ellinwood will host a festival of arts and antiques, crafts, cuisine and entertainment.

The K-96 June Jaunt, June 1-3, includes scavenger hunts, geo-caching, hidden treasures and bargains along the route.

“The idea has been brewing for a while,” said Dan Hartman, marketing committee chairman for the June Jaunt and economic development director for Lane County and the city of Dighton. “I believe if we want to do anything in rural communities, we have to collaborate. We have tremendous assets here that nobody else but us has.”

Kansas towns participating in the June Jaunt include Tribune, Leoti, Dighton, Scott City, Ness City, Rush Center, Great Bend and Ellinwood.

The event is small this year, Hartman said, but if the idea catches on the number of miles and towns involved will increase.

“We wanted it this first year to be just western Kansas,” he said. “We wanted rural communities to be highlighted – to hold them up and say these towns are thriving and not dead on arrival. We’ve got good stuff out here. That’s our underlying motivation.”

Katie Eisenhour, director of the Scott City Area Chamber of Commerce and Economic Development, said the concept was her idea.

“It took me a lot of time to get enough guts up to ask other people what they thought,” she said. “I thought we needed a regional event to draw folks, create a great platform event that would also appeal to the local people.

“We wanted to feature the fact that we have a lot of history to offer — a great deal of antique stores and collectible type of things to go with our history and a lot of artists.”

That stretch of highway includes a diverse range of geography, lifestyles and interests — from wetlands to prairie, from fossils to American Indian battlefields and pueblos, to the homestead of George Washington Carver and the hometown of Boston Red Sox legend “Smoky Joe” Wood.

“I think this allows visitors to pick and choose and explore as much of 96 highway as they would like to without feeling overwhelmed, misled or confused,” said Cris Collier, executive director of the Great Bend Convention & Visitors Bureau. “It has generated a lot of excitement and enthusiasm to participate. Everybody is talking about getting out and experiencing authentic rural communities.”

This story was originally published April 9, 2012 at 5:00 AM with the headline "Eight Kansas communities to take part in K-96 June Jaunt."