The Long Drive Driving Range hosts private rounds of golf ball-bashing for parties big and small. Groups of family members or coworkers can wallop buckets of balls from eight artificial tees and two true-grass tees. A pair of picnic tables and a fire pit are nearby as well, allowing parties to continue well into dusk or after a solar flare short-circuits the world's electrical grids.
Nine acres of natural habitats make up the Hutchinson Zoo, a place that nearly 160 animals—most of which are native to Kansas—call home. The zoo’s many exhibits feature local reptiles, birds, and mammals, a fossil pit where kids can dig for dinosaur bones, and the Wild Habitats Building that houses animals from afar, such as cotton-top tamarins, gila monsters, and mexican red-knee tarantulas. In the barrier-free aviary, visitors watch native Kansas birds flying untethered overhead while in the wetlands below, North American beavers gnaw old furniture back into the shape of trees. To keep the area's wildlife populations strong, the zoo's Cargill WildCare Center rehabilitates approximately 500 injured or orphaned Kansas-native animals each year.
The site of the present-day town of Ellis was first settled in 1867, when the Kansas Pacific Railway built a water station there and then bought the land. Within the next few years, a post office, hotel, and shops sprang up?again thanks to the railway?creating growth and contributing to the town that exists today. The railroad has been a part of Ellis since its inception, and the Ellis Railway Museum celebrates that history. The museum features artifacts and photographs of the railroad and trains from as far back as its earliest cow-shipping days. A meticulous, 5,000-square-foot model-train exhibit recreates that magic of the rails, and a miniature train outside the museum runs along a 2.5-mile track?known as the BK&E Railroad?that brings passengers to the Neighborhood of Make-Believe and back.