Kansas Teachers' Hall of Fame
Dodge City, Kansas
The Kansas Teachers' Hall of Fame opened in its current location in 1982. It was the first teachers' hall of fame in the U.S., and still the only one to share its building with a Wild West wax museum. It's easy to visit, but not easy to get into: nominees have to have been Kansas teachers for at least 25 years, pass 18 induction criteria, and have made "a major contribution" to kids or their profession. Members include former teachers such as Grace Casebolt and Gussie Mootz, Alice Tuttle and Arthur Scroggins. All were revered in their time.
Aside from the Hall of Fame Gallery, with its pictures and information about the inductees, the Hall of Fame has a room devoted to school artifacts, including textbooks, old mimeograph machines, a bulletin board display of Weekly Readers, and a phalanx of uncomfortable wood desks with tiny hinged tables.
A door leads outside to the back yard and the Hall of Fame's restored 1887 one-room schoolhouse. The building was moved here in 2015 from neighboring Pleasant Hill. It was in use as a school until 1946, and still has its original bell, chalkboards, desks, stove, and 1912 piano. Our guide, a retired teacher, said that the schoolhouse and Hall of Fame both stand on Dodge City's old Boot Hill, although there have as yet been no sightings of ghostly gunslingers or schoolmarms.