Abilene is a small Kansas town on the plains west of Topeka, best known as the boyhood home of Dwight D. Eisenhower. The Eisenhower Presidential Library, Museum, and Boyhood Home complex is the main reason to stop — it covers his life from growing up in this modest clapboard house to commanding the D-Day invasion and serving two terms as president. He and Mamie are buried in a small chapel on the grounds.
Abilene also has a Wild West pedigree. In the 1860s and 1870s it was the terminus of the Chisholm Trail, where Texas cattlemen drove their herds to the railhead. Wild Bill Hickok served briefly as town marshal. The Old Abilene Town heritage site recreates the cattle-drive era with period buildings along a boardwalk, and the Abilene and Smoky Valley Railroad runs heritage trains from the restored 1887 depot. The grand Seelye Mansion and Lebold Mansion survive from the boom years that followed, and an 1901 Parker Carousel, built right in town, still turns on summer afternoons.