Brainerd, Kansas: Time, Place, and Memory on the Web. (http://rootinaround.com/brainerd/). Created and maintained by Kevin Roe. Reviewed September 16-20, 2004.
The Web site, Brainerd, Kansas: Time, Place, and Memory on the Web, recounts the history and current state of a small, largely-abandoned 19th Century railroad boom town. The Web site was created in 2000 by Kevin Roe, who first visited Brainerd in 1994 while embarked on a cross country journey spurred by the desire to break free of a mental rut and an uninspiring job. This journey of self-renewal left Roe open to new discoveries and fresh perspectives. Something about Brainerd charmed Roe and his love of the town is conveyed in the Web site.
Roe has a number of purposes in recounting the history of this typically Kansan boom town that went bust when the railroad was rerouted three miles away. The first is “the principle that getting to know a particular place in all its intimate detail is a good and useful thing, and a process by which one can gain a great deal of respect for a landscape and its complex past and present.” Roe largely succeeds in this endeavor, providing the reader with a concise history of the town, including maps dating back to the 19th century. However, Roe is at pains to emphasize that his history of Brainerd is not definitive or meant to be a scholarly academic product. For instance, he does not use citations, but does include a lengthy bibliography. A strength of his Website is his use of photographs, plats, and the memories of three elderly Brainerdites to convey a sense of the changes wrought by economic forces, the movement of people, and the elapsing of time itself. With this goal explicitly states, Roe’s photographs of overgrown lots, and foundations covered in rubble are juxtaposed with a 19th century home that is still extant and has had many additions. Thus, Roe shows that while nature is in the process of removing some memories, people are actively striving to maintain others. As Roe states, the “relationships to the present-day Brainerd were intertwined with their remembrance of Brainerds past, suggesting that collective memories of a very small place like Brainerd may exert a sustaining force more powerful than the economic engines that spawned and then abandoned the town.”
In the end, the Website was created for personal reasons. One of Roe’s primary inspirations for the creation of the site was his grandmother’s brief residence in Brainerd in the early 1900. As mentioned in Doing Digital History: A Guide to Presenting, Preserving, and Gathering the Past on the Web by Daniel Cohen and Roy Rosenzweig (University of Pennsylvania Press, forthcoming, 2005) genealogical interests have been a prime motivator of many non-academic history-related sites on the Internet.
It appears (but may not be the case) that the site has not been updated frequently. The Introduction section is dated December 1999, the Website is copyrighted 2000, and none of the links in the News section of the website is more recent that 2000. Like many Websites that are the product of an inspired individual, the content on the Brainerd, Kansas site may reflect the changing priorities and time constraints of its author.
The Web site’s form is simple and straightforward. A frame on the left side of the window allows quick browsing between its three main sections, Introduction, History, and Memories. A Gallery section provides a central location for all of the photographs and reproductions of maps and plats that are hyperlinked throughout the various sections of the website. It also includes a guestbook, a link to email the author, and links to reviews of the web site. However, besides these basic elements of New Media, the Web site’s content is essentially similar to that of printed material, consisting almost entirely of text and illustrations.