K-177: The Flint Hills Scenic Byway, Council Grove to Cassoday
About 48 miles on K-177 from Council Grove to Cassoday: the Kaw Nation's park, the tallgrass preserve at Strong City, the Cottonwood Falls courthouse, Bazaar's cattle trade and the Pioneer Bluffs ranch.
The Route at a Glance
From Council Grove to Cassoday, K-177 through the Flint Hills is the Flint Hills National Scenic Byway, one of two in Kansas. It was signed K-13 until 1965.
Allegawaho Memorial Heritage Park, on the Kaw Nation's old reservation, is five miles southeast of the start. The highway runs south through pasture to Strong City, where the Tallgrass Prairie National Preserve sits beside it north of US-50, then crosses the Cottonwood River into Cottonwood Falls and passes the Chase County Courthouse.
The grass is the business. About four and a half million acres of these hills escaped the plow because the grazing was worth more, and cattlemen fattened steers here on the way to the Kansas City stockyards. Railroads laid track for the cattle traffic, and by the mid-twentieth century more than half a million head were turned out each summer. The BNSF main line still runs beside the highway, and Bazaar, seven miles south of Strong City, still ships cattle by rail.
Matfield Green had about 350 people around 1900 and 49 in 2020. Pioneer Bluffs, on the highway there, keeps the Rogler ranch, begun by Charles Rogler, an Austrian immigrant who walked from Iowa in 1859: a 1908 house, a 1915 barn and a mile of limestone fence, the grounds signed and the buildings open by appointment. The byway ends at Cassoday, which calls itself the Prairie Chicken Capital of the World, at I-35 and the Kansas Turnpike. It runs about 48 miles, an hour without stops.
The Drive, Stop by Stop
3 stops along the route, in driving order from Council Grove, Kansas to Cassoday, Kansas. One of them sits off the road itself — the distance is noted on each.
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That's the drive. Take your time, pull over often, and let K-177: The Flint Hills Scenic Byway, Council Grove to Cassoday do what it does best.
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