The Van Zan Record
Prequel to Reign of Fire (recovered
notebook of Denton Van Zan Part 1)
Not sure where to begin. Guess I should start writing it all
down, to the best of my memory before the shit really hits the fan. My early
years I’d been a Boy Scout, played more football than baseball. Not much to do
out in Kansas. Mom and pop never let us sit inside and watch TV. They’d tell us
to get out in the world and make our own fun. And we did. By the age of 12 it
wasn’t a problem for me going camping with nothing but a blanket roll and a rod
an reel. I knew how to handle myself. I knew how to rig a line down on the
river and catch a fish, or set a trap and grab a squirrel. Catching fire was
pretty easy to. To know where I came from, the place, the past is to know where
this story is going and how it ends. My name is Denton Van Zan and I am from
Coffeyville, Kansas.
The place I hail from sits on the Verdigris River in the corner
part of Montgomery County, bottom right corner Kansas, in the Central part of
the good ol’ United States of American. If you want some precision then about
75 miles (121 km) north of Tulsa, Oklahoma, and 60 miles (97 km) west of
Joplin, Missouri, about one-half mile north of the Oklahoma state line at
37°2′16″N 95°37′35″W (37.037708, -95.626438). The city is the location of the
lowest point in the state of Kansas at 679 feet (207 m) above sea level. Don’t
ask me how I can know this. I just do. Some things stick. Urgency requires
demand.
The town was founded in 1869 as an Indian trading post by
Col. James A. Coffey. Back then the Oklahoma border was in Indian Territory.
The town was expanded by the arrival of the Leavenworth, Lawrence &
Galveston Railroad in 1871. With the arrival of the railroad, a young surveyor,
Napoleon B. Blanton, was dispatched to lay out the town. The naming of the town
was left to the toss of a coin between Col. Coffey and U.S. Army Captain
Blanton. Blanton lost the toss and the town was officially named Coffeyville.
Most of history knows Coffeyville for the Dalton Gang. On
October 5, 1892 four of the gang were killed while Emmett Dalton survived with
23 gunshot wounds and was imprisoned for 14 years before being pardoned. They
had been attempting to rob two banks, First National Bank and Condon Bank. The
citizens recognized them under the fake beards and fought them after coming out
of one of the banks. The two banks at the time of the attempted robbery were
directly across the street from one another. Four citizens, including a U.S.
marshal, Marshal Charles T. Connelly, died in defense of the town. The town
holds an annual celebration each October in remembrance of the Dalton Raid and
the lives its citizens lost.
We were hard working people. Coffeyville is also home to
John Deere Corporation's Coffeyville. Works which is a major manufacturer of
off road equipment automatic transmissions for the construction, agriculture
and mining industries. Southwire Corp is a maker of stranded and solid core
wire and acquired the Leviton Industries facility of American Insulated Wire in
2010. Acme Foundry is a foundry that has been in operation since 1905 and employing
more than 300 people. Taylor Crane & Rigging is a regional hauling
operation, full-service industrial mover and craning services company. Taylor
also maintains a facility in Tulsa, Oklahoma. Other nearby in county employers
include Cessna Aircraft Division of Textron and Spears Manufacturing, a large
producer of extruded PVC pipe products.
Both ironic and coincident that Coffeyville’s industrialist
Douglas Brown founded Coffeyville Multiscope, which produced components of the
Norden bombsight which played a determining role in the perfection of precision
day light bombing during World War II as a result of the bombsight's advanced
accuracy and drift correction capability.
Coffeyville Municipal Airport is a few miles northeast of
the city along US-169. Though Coffeyville is the largest city in Montgomery
County, the county seat is Independence, 16 miles (26 km) northwest of the city.
Coffeyville had a long history as a center of industry and
manufacturing. CVR Energy, operated a 100,000 barrels per day refinery and a
large nitrogen fertilizer plant using a unique Texaco process of ammonia
extraction from coke by products produced in the refinery. Sherwin Williams
Chemical Co. has operated a chemical plant in the community since 1909. Maybe
that’s why they came. They could smell the fuel. Coffeyville enjoyed rapid
growth after the discovery of plentiful natural gas and abundant clay and was
from the turn of the century to the 1930s one of the largest glass and brick
manufacturing centers in the nation. During this same period, the development
of oil production in the area prompted the establishment of several oil field
equipment manufacturers. They sniffed us out from 8000+ miles. Who knows? They
came and burned it to ground. All of it. Every last building. Every last hope
and dream. To the last drop of it. But I will make sure history will tell it; they picked the wrong
nest to loot.
