Larned (Kansas) Community Web Site
Central States Scout Museum
Central States Scout Museum, Larned, Kansas
Anyone taking a Boy Scout group to Philmont from the
northeast quarter of the U.S. will not need to detour at all to visit the CSSM. It
would be worth the visit if it were a few hundred miles out of the way.
If you are coming from anywhere east of Kansas City, just take the best route to K.C. and then follow I-70 west to the Ellsworth exit. Take K-156 west to Larned. The museum is at 815 Broadway, Larned, Kansas 67550. To call, try 620-285-8938 or 285-6427. From Larned, you just follow US-56 west until you're within a stone's throw of Cimarron, NM. You'll get some history, too, since US-56 follows the route of the Santa Fe Trail. Best of all, Larned is just about exactly one day's drive from Philmont and the Museum has a bunkhouse in a back room that can provide your troop with lodging for the night at a nominal fee. Admission to the museum itself is only a dollar per person. If you leave enough time for your stop in Larned, you can easily spend another day or two at Larned's other two attractions: Fort Larned Nat'l. Historic Site and the Santa Fé Trail Center.
The museum fully occupies a former auto dealership and is FULL of
Scouting memorabilia, attractively displayed in showcases. The core of
the collection is the personal property of a former Scouter named
Charles Sherman who is the chief curator of the museum. It houses a
wealth of other items donated or loaned by other former Scouts in this
area --- and we are numerous! If you have any Scouting memorabilia in
the closet that should be seen by today's Scouts, you
should consider donating it or, at least, loaning it to the CSSM.
By the way, if some of the boys would rather play video games rather than look at the old stuff, ask them to turn on the computer. Don Shorock donated an old TI-99/4a to the museum and then wrote (or modified) a full diskful of Scouting related software. If you have a TI-99/4a and want a copy, you can have one from him, free of charge... if you'll donate ten dollars or more to the Museum.
Note that US-56 does not follow the railroad through town as shown!
From the northeast corner of the map, US-56 follows 14th Street west to Broadway and then south, past the CSSM, through downtown, to the railroad tracks, where it veers southwest (as shown).
Explore the rest of our web site