The courthouse in Cottonwood Falls looks as if somebody dropped a piece of France onto the prairie. It is a small limestone building in the Second Empire style, topped with a mansard roof and a clock tower, finished in the 1870s and still used by Chase County, which makes it one of the oldest working courthouses in Kansas. Around it are a handful of limestone streets with fewer than a thousand people living on them, and the whole place feels like a village that was built to last and then politely not expanded.
The surrounding riding is the reason to come. The Flint Hills are the largest remaining stretch of tallgrass prairie in North America, because the rock sits so close to the surface that farmers could never plough it. What you see are long, rounded ridges covered in bluestem grasses that go from green to copper through the year, with shallow valleys and limestone outcrops below. The roads follow the contours, so you get long easy curves, rises where the whole horizon opens, and very little traffic. In spring, ranchers burn the pastures to renew the grass, and a smoky horizon is normal. The wind can be strong, so grip the bars a little tighter on exposed crests.
Just up the road at Strong City, the Tallgrass Prairie National Preserve protects a ranch house, a barn and some of the remaining prairie, and it is a good place to walk a short path and smell the grass. The Cottonwood River runs through the town and gives it its name, along with the trees that line it. You will spot cattle, hawks and, with luck, a prairie chicken at the right time of year.
With a population this small, services are limited, so treat Cottonwood Falls as a place for coffee or a meal, and plan to fill the tank in Emporia, about thirty kilometres east, or in Council Grove to the north. Late afternoon is the best time to be here, when the light turns the hills gold and the courthouse glows in it.