Liberal, Kansas: Dorothy's Town on the High Plains

Liberal sits at the far southwestern corner of Kansas, a grain and beef town on the Cimarron River plain where Seward County meets the Oklahoma line. The town grew up around a railroad junction in the late eighteen hundreds and found its economic footing in agriculture and, in the twentieth century, natural gas processing. But Liberal also carries a stranger distinction.

In nineteen eighty-one, a businessman inspired by a waiter's answer to the question of what you'd expect to see in Kansas moved a nineteen-oh-seven farmhouse to the grounds of the local museum and declared it the official home of Dorothy Gale. Every year the town marks its connection to the Wizard of Oz, leaning into the flat landscape and the open sky that made the original story feel true.