By Randy Gonzales<\/p>\n
HAYS, Kan. — Conducting field surveys is a stimulating part of the job for Dr. Ken Neuhauser, professor of geosciences at Fort Hays State University.<\/p>\n
Neuhauser, who estimated he has gone on one or two geophysics surveys a year for about the last 15 years, used a magnetometer recently to survey a local stage and freight station called Lookout Station, used in the 19th<\/sup> century. With a magnetometer, the strength and location of the earth\u2019s magnetic field can be determined. The presence of iron-bearing metal changes the baseline readings of the magnetic field.<\/p>\n \u201cThis is exciting; this is fun,\u201d Neuhauser said. \u201cI have this job, and part of it is the opportunity to do this stuff.\u201d<\/p>\n Lookout Station was located southwest of Hays. It was used by Butterfield Overland Dispatch, which delivered freight on the Smoky Hill Trail. On April 14, 1867, Indians raided Lookout Station and killed three men. They were said to have been buried next to a burned out barn at the station.<\/p>\n Neuhauser had two students mark out a grid where the bodies were thought to have been buried. His son, Kris Neuhauser, a graduate student in geology at FHSU, and Dave Befort, who received his bachelor\u2019s degree in geology this year, staked out the grid, using red flags. Befort is the son of Don Befort, who owns the land.<\/p>\n \u201cI\u2019ve been involved in using magnetometers and sometimes electrical resistivity to see what\u2019s buried underground,\u201d Neuhauser said. \u201cI use this applied technique to teach to my classes — my senior field methods class, my summer senior field camp course. They learn to interpret and integrate various scientific procedures.\u201d<\/p>\n The Smoky Hill Trail Association asked for Neuhauser\u2019s help in determining if there were, indeed, three unmarked graves at Lookout Station.<\/p>\n \u201cWe do know the names of the men buried there,\u201d said Jim Gray, who ranches in Geneseo in central Kansas.<\/p>\n \u201cWe\u2019re hoping to put a monument out there in recognition of those men, a memorial to them,\u201d added Gray, who is a member of SHTA.<\/p>\n Gray said the group would reveal the names of the men killed at the station during a ceremony for the monument, whenever it is erected. The SHTA meets in October, which is when Neuhauser will present his findings to the group.<\/p>\n Shortly after the SHTA was founded, one of its members, Linda Kohls, spotted something on a field trip to Lookout Station.<\/p>\n \u201cShe was the one who recognized a difference in the color of the grass right next to where the barn dugout was,\u201d Gray said. \u201cIt was her perceptive quality — you could see the grass was the size of graves and there were three of them, side-by-side.\u201d<\/p>\n After studying the data, Neuhauser found some anomalies in the survey, just not enough to suit him. He saw iron-bearing objects below the surface at different depths.<\/p>\n \u201cI was hoping to see three linear shadowy patterns, like a string of pearls,\u201d Neuhauser said. \u201cI didn\u2019t see that.<\/p>\n \u201cThere\u2019s suspect anomalies there,\u201d he added. \u201cIt\u2019s my opinion that there\u2019s some iron-bearing things at these approximate depths.\u201d<\/p>\n As part of his students\u2019 course work, they are required to look for buried objects.<\/p>\n \u201cI\u2019ve got stuff buried all over this campus,\u201d Neuhauser said.<\/p>\n For example, one site has six 55-gallon steel drums buried at an undisclosed spot on FHSU property. Other iron-bearing items are also buried at other campus sites.<\/p>\n \u201cWe use these known field test sites,\u201d Neuhauser said. \u201cI make my students figure this stuff out. I don\u2019t tell them what\u2019s down there, nor how deep. They\u2019ve got to tell me. I\u2019m their client. They have to write up an analysis and produce a scientific report.\u201d<\/p>\n In the past, Neuhauser has been asked to survey everything from gasoline tanks buried years ago to several B-29 crash sites. The test flights took off from the former Walker Army Airfield, located about 15 miles east of Hays.<\/p>\n \u201cYou just analyze with the data, try to figure out where and how deep the iron-bearing features are,\u201d Neuhauser said.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" By Randy Gonzales HAYS, Kan. — Conducting field surveys is a stimulating part of the job for Dr. Ken Neuhauser, professor of geosciences at Fort… <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":142,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[3397,3398,11],"tags":[9993,106,649,9994],"class_list":["post-27108","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-area-news","category-campus-news","category-news","tag-dr-ken-neuhauser","tag-fort-hays-state-university","tag-geosciences","tag-kris-neuhauser"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[],"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/tigermedianet.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/27108","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/tigermedianet.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/tigermedianet.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tigermedianet.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/142"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tigermedianet.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=27108"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/tigermedianet.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/27108\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":27109,"href":"https:\/\/tigermedianet.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/27108\/revisions\/27109"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/tigermedianet.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=27108"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tigermedianet.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=27108"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tigermedianet.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=27108"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}