By CRISTINA JANNEY
Hays Post
The city of Hays, historic Fort Hays and Ellis County were all established in 1867, 150 years ago this year.
The community’s sesquicentennial was celebrated this weekend.
For three men living in Hays, that history is not just something to be celebrated once or twice a century. It is not plaques on a wall or disintegrating newspaper clippings. It is their lives and their families.
Henry Schwaller IV, George Philip V and Pete Felten, agreed to sit down with the Hays Post and talk about Hays history and changing face of the city.
Early Hays
Schwaller’s family history dates back to the 1870s in Hays. His great-great grandfather Clemens immigrated to America with his brothers from Switzerland in the early 1800s. Clemens brought his son, Henry I, to settle in Ellis County on a farm near Walker.
Henry and Clemens worked in a general store in Catherine Astad. In about 1888 or 1890, the family acquired a lumberyard along the railroad tracks in Hays.
“They were a large Swiss German family. They were not Volga Germans, but they integrated into the community well and were very involved,” Henry Schwaller IV said.
Henry I, married, May Farley, the daughter of the local druggist. She was the Ellis County beauty queen and represented the area at the 1904 World’s Fair.
Henry II was the third child of Henry I and May. The family focus was business, but they were also involved in the community. May and her sister volunteered at the Presbyterian Club and were very active in other social circles, including Bridge Club and the Women’s Literay Club, which successfully obtained a grant from Andrew Carnegie to build the Hays Public Library.
Henry I was politically active and was one of the groups that campaigned to pave the Hays streets with brick, which was controversial at the time. Some people said they wanted to stay with their rural roots, and brick streets were too cosmopolitan. Henry I’s brother, Fred, was a charter member of the Hays Rotary Club and started the first golf course in Hays.
The Depression
The 1910s and 1920s were good years for the Schwallers, but the prospects changed even for successful families during the 1930s.
The first set back for local businessmen like the Schwallers was the income tax of World War I.
“Although we were comfortable and we had a business,”Schwaller said, “The 1930s were very, very tough. Our customers couldn’t pay and our customers could not afford. There was no building going on. It was a tough time to be in the lumber business.”
Although the economic conditions were awful as commodity prices were very low, the environmental conditions were perhaps worse, Schwaller said.
The dust storms during the Dust Bowl were so bad that it turned day into night. Schwaller said his grandfather recalled going to a basketball game inside Sheridan Coliseum. It was so dusty they had to call off the game because they could not see inside the building.
“The dust would get in houses. I understand that my great-grandmother would close all the windows as best they could and get all the towels they could and make them wet to seal every crevice, and the dust was still crazy,” Schwaller said.
“Not only were there really tough economic times … they were really horrible … but the environmental conditions were awful because the topsoil was just drifting away. Those are the stories that will stick with me most. If it were not for Franklin Delano Roosevelt and the New Deal, we would not have made it.”
In fact, Roosevelt’s WPA commitment to Hays was what turned the family from Republicans to Democrats and frankly other families too. Schwaller said many families had two pictures hanging in their parlor. One was of Jesus and the other was of Franklin Roosevelt. Roosevelt’s administration helped to revise farming practices, bring electricity to the region, and build the courthouse, municipal park and the pool.
“The list was a huge bounty to Ellis County when people couldn’t find work,” he said.
Philip Hardware
George Philip II came to American in 1873 from Scotland. He and a cousin had a general store in Victoria and George Philip was the postmaster there. In 1894 George started the hardware store in Hays. In 1896, the store was moved into its long-time location at 801 Main St.
The Philip family ran the hardware store until 1996.
George Philip V, 62, who still lives in Hays today, grew up working in his family’s store. He used the hardware to build himself elaborate toys, which his father would eventually disassemble and restock.
Downtown was the shopping hub. It was the social hub, Philip said.
“I remember when 27th and Vine were dirt roads, and now look what is there,” he said.
George grew up in what is now the Mary Elizabeth home. They family kept horses, and George said he remembers ridding along Big Creek and many areas that are now busy streets.
“It was a very small town,” he said. “That is one of the things we took for granted, maybe it was something we shouldn’t have taken it for granted.”
During Hays’s centennial in 1967, George and his family participated in a large pageant that depicted the history of the city. The pageant was staged on the football field and included elaborate costumes and live action with actors on horseback.
As the large chains came into the city, small local businesses like the Philip Hardware Store began to suffer. George V dropped power tools and appliances and focused on items that were harder to find and the big box stores did not carry. Eventually it would not be enough, and George made the decision to close. During this time, other downtown retailers suffered.
“Hays has done a lot downtown, a lot of revitalization. A lot of business is interested. They realize, hey, downtown can be a real vital place to shop … just to visit. There is the Art Walk,” Philip said.
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Catholic, protestants and the War
Pete Felten, local artists and Hays native, was born in Hays in 1933. Felten’s ancestors came from Germany in the 1700s and settled in Pennsylvania. They farmed their way across the country and finally settled in Hays. His father had a truck line and hauled freight from Kansas City to Colby on Highway 40.
He remembers a division in Hays between the German Catholics and the Protestants. Although the two groups got along fine, they had separate schools.
He remembers playing with the boys from German families. The Catholic schools were strict, according to his Catholic friends. The nuns and priests did not like the boys speaking German or using the term, gella, which was a slang for the affirmative. This is where the name of Gella’s Dinner came from.
The boys’ military school may have been strict, but Felten remembers their huge cheers during football game.
“The were really fiery. They were great,” he said.
Felten he had fond members of Hays growing up and riding the hills of Hays on his bicycle.
Hays never had a boom, but had continual growth. The population of Ellis County never soared, but many of the older farm families moved into the city over the years, Felten said.
Farming had never been lucrative, but oil was discovered in the area in 1920s and that brought some prosperity to the farm families. The oil industry brought new businesses to Hays. The oil industry along with the college, which was established in 1902, both helped bring people from new regions with different backgrounds to the city.
“The general health of the city just got better and better,” he said.
Felted remembers pretending to fight the Nazis during World War II. He remembered scrap drives and the slowing of building in the city.
The USO was located in Hays and young men from the Walker Army Airfield would come into the city to visit the beer gardens. A lot of those soldiers ended up staying in Hays after the war.
Hays had prisoners of war at the experiment station.
“They loved it here,” Felten said. “They did not have to fight. They could speak the language because there were so many Germans out here and good food. They liked it out here in Hays.”
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Building for Boomers
As the cloud of the Depression lifted, the Schwallers knew they needed to diversify the business beyond a lumber yard.
“When he was running the lumberyard, there were 12 other lumber yards in town,” he knew he needed to get ahead,” Henry IV said of his grandfather.
In 1950s, Hays was hit by devastating floods. Henry II built some spec homes in the area of 22nd and Oak, which he called Highland Avenue. People eager to move out of the flood plain moved to the addition.
In 1959, Henry II bought the Winter’s family farm at 22nd and Vine for about $200,000. The property extended to 27th Street to about Indian Trail, about 150 to 200 acres.
At the time, this was thought to be an odd move. Most people in the community at the time assumed the city would grow to the west away from the cemetery. With the government land bordering the city on the south, Henry II saw the potential of city growth to the north and east.
Henry II also knew the state had adopted Vine Street as part of the new Highway 183.
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Not a hip city
Felten served four years in the military and came home to Hays as the hippie movement was beginning. He said the city leaders thought the city had a hippy problem, but Felten said it was exaggerated.
Locals were unsure if Felten, with his beard, was a hippie or an artist.
A group of students from Victoria came to interview him at the time and were shocked that the FHSU president’s daughter was riding around town in an open jeep with a big dog.
Felten just explained she was an artist.
The people in Hays were practical, Felten said, but there was a significant opposition to the war in Vietnam, especially among the young men in the community.
The completion of I-70 to the Colorado border in 1970, brought more motels and restaurants to the city and Felten said the city became more cosmopolitan.
Growing up in Hays in the 1960 and ’70s
Henry Schwaller IV was born in 1966, one year before the community’s centennial.
Schwaller remembers growing up in a much smaller city surrounded by country. He remembers a time before the Dillons was built on 27th and Hall and when everything west of that point was fields and farming.
His grandfather Henry II lived at 22nd and Oak, which at that time was in the country, and the family had a small farm there.
“It is hard to explain,” Schwaller said. “When you are really tiny and you look from your house and there is nothing and it is all fields and all dirt and now there are things there, it is really mind-boggling how the city has grown not only in population, but in density and land mass over the last 50 years.”
When he was born Interstate 70 was not finished and not connected to the rest of the country, and Vine Street did not exist in the form it is today.
He remembered going to the first A&W Drive on Eighth Street and Sandy’s Drive-in where the Hays Welcome Center is now at 2700 Vine.
Henry IV walked and biked to school and was among the first students as a sophomore to attend classes in the new Hays High School on 13th Street east of Canterbury.
“As a little kid all my memories are around parks and food and fun,” he said.
Henry IV spent a lot of time with his father and grandmother, Juliette Schwaller. She was also active in the family business and in the community.
Juliette had a son who would be eventually diagnosed with a mental illness and was referred to Menninger’s Clinic in Topeka. Juliette had the means and time to drive her son back and forth to receive care. However, she thought much about those families who did not have the means to seek care for their loved ones. Juliette helped form High Plains Mental Health and community mental health centers around the state.
She was involved with the Hays Arts Council to a degree and became the first women to run the Democratic Party in Ellis County.
Henry II was also very politically active and served in Kansas Gov. Robert Docking’s administration first on the highway commission, which helped build Vine Street and completed Interstate 70. Then he was Secretary of Administration.
By this time the family had diversified even further, Henry’s grandfather raised cattle and horses and his father helped in the family real estate and rental business as well as ran a liquor store and connivence food store.
More economic hard times
Although the Dust Bowl had been very difficult on many Hays families, it was by no means the only economic downturn the community has faced.
“With the economic collapse again with farming and oil and industry in 1980s that extended all the way to 1994, it was very bleak here,” Schwaller said. … “It was absolutely devastating. It was devastating to our business and our family.”
“There was some who thought we may not survive the 1980s,” he said.
Growing a community
Henry IV said his families involvement in public service and politics in part lead him to be a city commissioner. He entered the commission in 1999. He lost re-election in 2007, and then won election in 2009 and has been on the commission since. His current term expires in 2020.
“This is something we do,” he said. “We are not just here to make a profit. We are here to give back to the community.”
The city started primarily because of three people, Buffalo Bill, who settled Rome; H.P. Wilson of the Union Pacific Railroad who developed Hays as we know the core; and Martin Allen, who named all the streets and told the residents what could and could not grow here.
However, Schwaller said it has really been groups of people who built Hays to what it is today. When Hays wanted a college, a group of residents worked toward that. A group fought for a bigger, better depot.
Since the recession in the 1980s and 1990s, the city has been able to build up reserves and steady its financial status. Many infrastructure repairs have also been completed since the turn of the century.
Henry IV said his biggest concern for the future is economic development. Rural Kansas’ population is in decline, and Hays can’t solely rely on retail for economic stability.
“We need to figure out what our next act is,” he said. “What are we going to do next. I have no doubt we will figure that out, but it is going to be a painful path getting there. It is going to take some time.”
Late in his grandfather’s life in 2013, his grandfather liked to be driven around town looking at construction and new additions. Henry IV took his grandfather up to 55th and Vine to the water tower and the two looked out over the city.
“He was blown away. We had been driving around looking at individual houses and where he used to live and now he could see the whole city. He said, ‘This is incredible. I never imagined this. Hays is a wonderful place. I never thought it would be this big. This is amazing.’”
When Schwaller was asked where Hays might be in 50 years or 100 years, he recalled a quote from Ray Crock, the founder of McDonald’s
“’I don’t know what we will be selling in the year 2000, but we will be selling more than anyone else,’ and I don’t know where we will be in 50 years, but we will be vibrant, we will still be here and we will be a regional center,” he said.
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Hope for the future
George Philip also said he is optimistic for the future of Hays.
“Hays is obviously growing,” he said. “There is a lot of residential development going on, obviously commercial development if you only look at the number of restaurant or retail outlets and the various products and services.”
“If I would have been dropped off the face of the earth 50 years ago and suddenly been dropped off again now,” he said, “I don’t think I would have recognized the place. So many landmarks have been torn down, so many new structures have been put up. It is rather remarkable.”