Quinton Heights hill a longtime 'sledding mecca'

Topeka Unified School District 501 essentially chopped in half the sledding area at Topeka's Quinton Heights hill when it built its Burnett Administrative Center, which was completed there in 1980.

Yet fresh snow has since continued to draw crowds of sledders to the steep but manageable slope.

"Best thing about Topeka winters," Topeka History Geeks member Donn Land wrote in a comment posted last November on the History Geeks Facebook page.

This week's "History Guy" video at CJOnline tells how people have long enjoyed sliding down Quinton Heights hill, located west of S.W. Topeka Boulevard and on the north side of S.W. 24th Street.

Even in 1987, The Topeka Capital-Journal reported the hill had "long been a sledding mecca."

The cutline for a Capital-Journal photo published in 1983 told how "Sledders from all across Topeka came armed with saucers, sleds, toboggans and inner tubes to test their sledding hills against the hill."

The accompanying article quoted a 15-year-old boy who described the hill as being "like a roller coaster."

It said one "intrepid soul" even experimented that day by going down the hill in a lawn chair.

Visitors to the hill haven't always seen smooth sledding. A 1987 Capital-Journal article quoted Owen Henson, then deputy superintendent for USD 501, as saying the district didn't discourage sledding on the hill but didn't encourage it either, out of concerns over legal liability.

"Every year there's someone hurt out there," he said.

Neighbors complained in 1987 that young people in their teens and early 20s — not the children and families who generally used the slope during daylight hours — were holding all-night beer parties on Quinton Heights hill.

USD 501 board members subsequently voted to close the hill to public access between 11 p.m. and 7 a.m. between Nov. 1 and April 1 and to ban motor vehicles from going down the hill at all times.

Still, daytime sledding has since continued.

As Topeka History Geeks member Dana Barnett commented last November, "That hill was soooo much fun!"

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