# Can anyone tell me where to find these "geoglyphs" in Kansas? **URL:** \ **Category:** Factual Questions\ **Created:** [September 1, 2020, 12:00am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/can-anyone-tell-me-where-to-find-these-geoglyphs-in-kansas/919489 "2020-09-01T00:00:53Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 12\ **Page:** 2
**Author:** ![brossa](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/brossa/32/3040_2.png) [@brossa](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/brossa)\ **Post date:** [September 4, 2020, 12:27pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/can-anyone-tell-me-where-to-find-these-geoglyphs-in-kansas/919489/21 "2020-09-04T12:27:31Z")
I found some historical aerial photos of the site [here](https://www.historicaerials.com/location/37.3125/-94.9375/T1975/16). Plot twist - the markings appeared between 2010 and 2012. That’s about 20 years after Big Brutus was shut down.The surface mines for coal to the SE were mined from the 1920s to 1974, and those mines make a lot more sense: intersecting straight-ish lines on a much larger scale. I think these features are too late, too small, and the wrong geometry to be old strip mine remnants. I think they purposely made on previously marginal bottomland for another purpose - art, wildlife habitat, dozer practice. ---
**Author:** ![brossa](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/brossa/32/3040_2.png) [@brossa](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/brossa)\ **Post date:** [September 4, 2020, 1:05pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/can-anyone-tell-me-where-to-find-these-geoglyphs-in-kansas/919489/22 "2020-09-04T13:05:10Z")
By the way, nice work, **Railer13**! ---
**Author:** ![carnivorousplant](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/carnivorousplant/32/3563_2.png) [@carnivorousplant](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/carnivorousplant)\ **Post date:** [September 4, 2020, 2:00pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/can-anyone-tell-me-where-to-find-these-geoglyphs-in-kansas/919489/23 "2020-09-04T14:00:59Z")
Symbols to show extraterrestrials where to load up on coal. It takes a lot of fuel to get back to Alpha Centauri. ---
**Author:** ![Lucas\_Jackson](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/lucas_jackson/32/303_2.png) [@Lucas\_Jackson](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Lucas_Jackson)\ **Post date:** [September 4, 2020, 2:16pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/can-anyone-tell-me-where-to-find-these-geoglyphs-in-kansas/919489/24 "2020-09-04T14:16:23Z")
> [@Railer13](#): > > So, probably not symbols created by intelligent extra-terrestials. Hey sheeple, who do you think was controlling the minds of the strip miners? Wake up! ---
**Author:** ![brossa](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/brossa/32/3040_2.png) [@brossa](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/brossa)\ **Post date:** [September 4, 2020, 2:29pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/can-anyone-tell-me-where-to-find-these-geoglyphs-in-kansas/919489/25 "2020-09-04T14:29:56Z")
Whoops - I see the aerial photo link should be [this one instead](https://www.historicaerials.com/location/37.29197/-95.02617/2015/16) for 2015. Contrast it with [this one](https://www.historicaerials.com/location/37.29197/-95.02617/2010/16) for 2010. The ‘aerials’ button in the upper left lets you change the year. ---
**Author:** ![onedayfishsale](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/onedayfishsale/32/4398_2.png) [@onedayfishsale](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/onedayfishsale)\ **Post date:** [September 4, 2020, 7:55pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/can-anyone-tell-me-where-to-find-these-geoglyphs-in-kansas/919489/26 "2020-09-04T19:55:16Z")
There should also be some satellite imagery available on [https://earthexplorer.usgs.gov/](https://earthexplorer.usgs.gov/) (likely the same but without the watermarks). I’ll try to dig some up if I can manage to get my account password reset. ---
**Author:** ![onedayfishsale](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/onedayfishsale/32/4398_2.png) [@onedayfishsale](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/onedayfishsale)\ **Post date:** [September 5, 2020, 12:28am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/can-anyone-tell-me-where-to-find-these-geoglyphs-in-kansas/919489/27 "2020-09-05T00:28:04Z")
These are from NAIP imagery. 2010-06-20, not much going on: [![](https://i.imgur.com/igLYOTY.jpg) ](https://i.imgur.com/igLYOTY.jpg) 2012-06-18, looks substantially complete: [![](https://i.imgur.com/yL9fDy6.jpg) ](https://i.imgur.com/yL9fDy6.jpg) 2014-07-22, maybe some of the pools are drying up? [![](https://i.imgur.com/xtJgjW2.jpg) ](https://i.imgur.com/xtJgjW2.jpg) And the most recent is 2019-06-28, looks like algae growing: [![](https://i.imgur.com/fVEWL1K.jpg) ](https://i.imgur.com/fVEWL1K.jpg) Sorry for the low-contrast images; the original are in TIFF format and I’m not getting the conversion to JPEG quite right. ---
**Author:** ![Railer13](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/railer13/32/9742_2.png) [@Railer13](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Railer13)\ **Post date:** [September 5, 2020, 12:39am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/can-anyone-tell-me-where-to-find-these-geoglyphs-in-kansas/919489/28 "2020-09-05T00:39:47Z")
> [@brossa](#): > > By the way, nice work, **Railer13**! Thanks. But credit should go to the folks on the ‘Kansas History Geeks’ group on Facebook. ---
**Author:** ![brossa](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/brossa/32/3040_2.png) [@brossa](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/brossa)\ **Post date:** [September 5, 2020, 2:13pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/can-anyone-tell-me-where-to-find-these-geoglyphs-in-kansas/919489/29 "2020-09-05T14:13:28Z")
> [@Railer13](#): > > Thanks. But credit should go to the folks on the ‘Kansas History Geeks’ group on Facebook. Those folks were very helpful. I see that somebody remembers the place from years before it existed! ---
**Author:** ![Retzbu\_Tox](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/retzbu_tox/32/11829_2.png) [@Retzbu\_Tox](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Retzbu_Tox)\ **Post date:** [September 5, 2020, 5:10pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/can-anyone-tell-me-where-to-find-these-geoglyphs-in-kansas/919489/30 "2020-09-05T17:10:43Z")
Thank you to everyone who contributed on this! I thought it seemed like a weirdly incomplete segment on “What On Earth?”. The _ **actual** _ answer to what the “symbols” are is far more satisfying than the gibberish their talking heads spouted. In a segment in an earlier season, they looked at spiraling sand dunes on the edge of an African desert. After their usual goofy conjectures, they _ **did** _ send someone to go look at them, only to find there was a guy with a tractor plowing the patterns into the sand. He told them his family had been doing that to help water collect in the grooves in an attempt to reclaim tillable ground. They should have done the same thing on the “Ghost Town Terror” episode, and asked the landowner about his funny shaped holes. ---
**Author:** ![Sigene](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/df788c/32.png) [@Sigene](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sigene)\ **Post date:** [September 5, 2020, 9:03pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/can-anyone-tell-me-where-to-find-these-geoglyphs-in-kansas/919489/31 "2020-09-05T21:03:54Z")
one can look up the property ownership information by a short google search for Cherokee county plat maps. It includes personal enough data that the owner can be contacted by mail for information on the property. ---
**Author:** ![Banksiaman](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/banksiaman/32/3334_2.png) [@Banksiaman](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Banksiaman)\ **Post date:** [September 5, 2020, 11:23pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/can-anyone-tell-me-where-to-find-these-geoglyphs-in-kansas/919489/32 "2020-09-05T23:23:52Z")
> [@Banksiaman](#): > > In Google Earth these look a bit more purposeful than residual earth-moving, but also look far fresher, with sharper and clearer contours. At a guess, a decade or two at most. > [@brossa](#): > > Plot twist - the markings appeared between 2010 and 2012. That’s about 20 years after Big Brutus was shut down.The surface mines for coal to the SE were mined from the 1920s to 1974, and those mines make a lot more sense: I’ll take that as a win. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/can-anyone-tell-me-where-to-find-these-geoglyphs-in-kansas/919489.md?page=1)