Ch1 - How could a complex environmental narrative begin with a suicide?

CHAPTER 1 BELGIAN DAIRY, DODSON, MISSOURI 1852 - 1921

America’s 19th century demanded land surveys of its territories.

Unfortunately for Joseph Guinotte, a Belgian-born engineer, Mexico’s railway construction project halted with the outbreak of the Mexican-American war. Guinotte needed a fresh engineering project and Kansas City became his answer.

Possibly six thousand Belgians, mostly Brabantines and Hesbignons, arrived in Missouri across 1852–56. Belgian arrivals from east of the Brabant joined others originating in the Hesbaye or Namur regions.

Guinotte land-surveyed what was increasingly known as the town of Kanza. By 1861 he and his Brussels-born bride, Aimée Brichaut, jointly sponsored nearly one hundred Belgian family arrivals. Their patronage extended to three hundred travelers but only two hundred survived the cholera-laden trip. Newcomers adapted tool sheds and shacks near Guinotte’s 3rd and Troost manor for residential purposes.

Husband Joseph and wife Aimée spent long evenings in their manor, Joseph, hinged at his waist bent over a plotting desk while she penned letters. Joseph’s engineering and surveying talents

were complemented by Aimée’s hospitality, culture and even spirituality interests.

Twenty miles south of Guinotte’s manor a second België engineer, Charles Jeffreys, hosted an even larger enclave, one staffed by arriving Belgians. Both Guinotte and Jeffreys had earlier endured the shaky aftermath of Belgium’s civil war but neither anticipated a similar experience in pioneer America.

Jeffreys’ land holdings actually dwarfed Guinotte’s, featuring dual mansions set near Grandview and Hickman Mills, Missouri.

When a Civil War campaign displaced a dozen Belgian families, Jeffreys allowed them to camp near his Grandview mansion.

Jayhawkers curiously equated Jeffreys’ generosity with an act of aiding and abetting the enemy.

By war’s end both België engineers were out-of-favor, but perhaps more importantly, financially sacked. On September 1st 1867 Joseph Guinotte’s lifeless body was discovered in the woods east of the manor following the report of a Navy revolver.

What would become of Guinotte’s log-home mansion, a place that had introduced Belgian hospitality to the town of Kanza, a place where visitors for the first time had experienced gezellig, a wonderful feeling, although difficult to define.

During decades following her husband’s death Aimée struggled with concerns spanning uncertain family finances and singleparenting. After abandoning plans for a repatriation to Brussels she eventually repurchased their 3rd and Troost mansion.

Prior to Joseph’s untimely death they had planned a church for what they termed the Preservation neighborhood, believing a local parish would nurture not only Belgians and others, too. Although they could have picked Joseph, Belgian’s patron saint or even Liège’s sponsor, Paul the Guinotte’s had settled on Italy’s Francis, adding a Seraph label in favor of angelic supporters.

The original St. Francis church structures were mostly destroyed by a1903 Missouri river flood and another the following year.

Parishioners required nearly twenty years more to re-erect a more substantial brick structure.

While Guinotte and Jeffreys were Belgian noblemen, others aspired to noblesse status. Charles Jeffreys had originally sponsored

Billy Dodson’s journey to Missouri, saving Dodson further indentured farm service in Lancaster, Pennsylvania. While Dodson irritated Jeffreys with ramblings regarding their common origins, Jeffreys acknowledged Dodson’s ambition, if not his enterprise.

Dodson rather remarkably survived the Civil War without controversy. Post-war Billy’s family, one including two sons, had created a thriving dairy, cultivating row crops like corn and milo, too. Dodson’s dilemma didn’t center on either dairy or crop yields but the fact the farm didn’t belong to him.

Recognizing his sons would eventually require more land to support emerging families. Yet few unclaimed properties remained, excepting damp river bottoms fronting both the Little Blue River and Indian Creek.

The war and reconstruction efforts had diminished Jeffreys’ financial holdings causing him to consider repatriation. Jeffreys didn’t repatriate to Brussels but to Philadelphia. And from there in 1885 he deeded two hundred flooded acres to Billy Dodson.

The proposal to name the place Dodson didn’t originate from Billy Dodson’s vanity but from a railroad surveyor’s lack of originality. Having recently christened Archie, Butler and Drexel as railroad towns, a surveyor penciled in Dodson as a designator for a railroad milepost.

Dodson brothers shared driving a buckboard team to Troost avenue icehouse before resupplying the city’s grocers. Contents of heavy milk cans were further subdivided, milk was even sold by the bucket. Most days, deliveries completed by noon, a Dodson brother returned to the Dodson diary via the Blue River road.

Billy Dodson died during 1911’s long winter, the farm passing to Robert, Dodson’s elder son. While not the principal heir, younger Charles remained, mainly raising row crops. In early March 1921 as Charles Dodson returned from a Saturday milk run he noticed a touring car halted along one of their access roads. .

Charles straightened his hat and trotted his team to a stop beside the touring LaSalle, noting occupants sporting attire and wearing boots far cleaner than a dairyman’s. Perhaps fretting over a creditor visit to discuss unpaid seed invoices, Charles whistled for his brother to join him.

Robert Dodson recognized the tallest of the four visitors as Kansas City’s mayor, Sam Stroker. After welcoming Stroker to their property, Robert inquired about the purpose of their visit.

The mayor introductions his companions, a trio described as racetrack promoters: Eric Price, a former English bicycle racer, Clint Doty, son of National Motor Car Company founder and William Danforth, principal of California’s Rodeo Land and Water Company.

Stroker shared that the trio had expressed an interest in the Dodson property as a building site for large, elevated board track, presenting a noisy word picture of cheering race fans and speeding roadsters.

The Dodson dairyman brothers politely listened, wondering when Stroker might propose a sales price. Instead the mayor addressed a compensable need for nineteen thousand paid-parking spots for a city that garaged fewer than nine thousand automobiles.

While Robert had both driven and ridden in an automobile, Charles Dodson had experienced only one ride, and that as a passenger. Discussion of thousands of parked cars and race speeds exceeding one hundred miles per hour, fell beyond dairying’s dayto-day.

Danforth unfurled an unedited set of Beverly Hills track plans, using the Dodson dairy feed lot as a guide for placement of an enormous mile-and-an-1/8th wooden track. Records are unclear whether Danforth or perhaps Stroker suggested a name and a mission.

THE

THE MILLION DOLLAR SPEEDWAY GREATEST DISPLAY OF SKILL, NERVE AND DARING