okansas.blogspot.com Occassional thoughts about orienteering
Saturday, August 21, 2004
Today's street orienteering
OK hosted a very low-key street orienteering event today. Gene designed the course for the annual (though we've missed a few years) Quantrill's Quandary.
Most of the control locations are at historical markers related to Quantrill's Raid. When you got to the location you used the information on the historical marker to answer a question on the map. The 4th control's question was "Speers lost how many sons?" The answer is "2."
If you're not familiar with Quantrill's Raid all you really need to know is that in 1863 Quantrill -- a sleazy Missourian -- brought a group of "raiders" with him to Lawrence where he killed about 200 people and burned most of the town. It wasn't a battle, it was a massacre.
If you're interested in learning a bit more of the history, check out the City of Lawrence Quantrill's Raid page. If you're really interested, google "quantrill's raid" and you'll find lots of reports.
One of the strange things (to me, at least) is that you'll bump in to people who consider Quantrill a hero. Some of the pages are actually quite disturbing. Just to give you a sense of that, here is a quote from a page from a school web page in Missouri, "This raid [on Lawrence] was Quantrill's best moment. His gang killed 143 to 216 men (it isn't known for sure how many men he exactly killed.)"
