Ad Astra Publishing

   Mona Winder Kennedy’s second book, Grand Centre on Wolf Creek: A Forgotten Community, is the first-ever compilation of 50 years of writings by local newspaper columnist Harley P. Tripp and others that relate the history of this long gone Kansas community and its subsequent successor, the city of Waldo, Kansas.  Mona found Tripp’s tales of everyday life in the region “to be poignant, descriptive, and at times funny and totally entertaining.”
   Published from 1910 to 1950, these stories relate a complete history of the people of Grand Centre and Waldo from 1870 through the mid-20th Century.  A first-rate primary document for the serious researcher and a simply must read for any historical enthusiast of Great Plains lore.

   “I don’t really know where to start explaining this project. It has been circling around in my head for about three years. During the winter of 2007, I read all the Waldo (KS) Advocate newspapers with a plan in mind—to compile a collection of the births, deaths, and marriages from 1910 when the newspaper started until it ceased in 1942.
   It got out of hand; as I read, I found myself copying interesting bits of Waldo/Grand Center items and other articles of interest about the area. My collection of Harley P. Tripp (known to everyone locally as “H. P.”) writings started at that time.
   Grand Center was never legally platted a town. It is located in the southeast portion of Valley Township in Osborne County, Kansas. The people and businesses of the 1880s are all within a three mile range of one another and certainly not close enough to be called a town. Any prospects of being a town died in 1889 when the Union Pacific Railroad ran its track up the south branch of Wolf Creek instead of the north branch and established the shipping point of Waldo, three miles to the southeast. By the 1890s families were leaving; some of the businesses relocated to Waldo, moving business, building, and family.
   H. P. Tripp wrote off and on for nearly 50 years. His articles were published in the Waldo, Luray, and Osborne newspapers over that period of time. He was a sheepherder, a farmer, a journalist, a grain elevator manager, and a newspaper editor. He was a husband, a father, and a Christian man. I found his stories to be poignant, descriptive, sad, and at times funny and totally entertaining.
   This journal is mainly from his writings, with a handful of stories penned by H. L. Tripp (H. P.’s twin brother) and a few letters from the early Grand Center Thomas family. I cannot vouch for the accuracy of the stories as they are from his memory over time, but I think the stories are a fairly representative depiction of early frontier life in Kansas.
   I hope you enjoy reading the book as much as I enjoyed compiling the collection.”

- Excerpt from the Introduction by Mona Winder Kennedy.