Starting a museum focusing on the Underground Railroad is proving to be more difficult than running the Underground Railroad.

The Underground Railroad was neither underground nor a railroad, but the name given to a network run by abolitionists before and during the Civil War who helped shepherd slaves from the South to freedom in the North.

Kansas, a hotbed of fighting over the issue of slavery, was a key part of the Underground Railroad. At least 75 hiding places and trails along the Underground Railroad have been documented in northeast Kansas.

Two years ago, U.S. Sen. Sam Brownback, R-Kan., pitched the idea of setting up an abolitionist museum and helped set up a committee to locate a site in Kansas for the facility.

Since then, the committee has been at odds over where to locate the museum, with the main fight between officials in Douglas County, who want it built near Clinton Lake, and Miami County officials who are pushing for a site near Osawatomie.

Bill Coulter, the chairman of the committee who is from Miami County, said he has become exasperated by the fight and has stopped holding monthly committee meetings.

Martha Parker, curator of the Clinton Lake Museum and a member of the abolitionist committee, said Coulter has “dropped the ball.”

Parker said the abolitionist museum should be built near the Clinton Lake information center. The location is best suited because of its proximity to major highways and population centers, she said.

“This is just like a diamond waiting to be set,” she said. Douglas County, she said, was the “epicenter” of the Underground Railroad, while Osawatomie is too small and remote to be a proper place for a national museum.

But Coulter said he envisioned possibly a dual site where people could be shuttled back and forth and experience what it was like to be a runaway slave, pursued by bounty hunters and going from point to point along the Underground Railroad.

But the committee has not gone along with his idea, he said.

“I personally don’t care if it’s in Douglas or Miami, but I can’t do this stonewalling thing. I really went there with an open mind and thought I could accomplish something. I’ve tried desperately to convince these people that the museum has to be a value-added plan,” he said.

Without a consensus, Brownback has lost interest in the project, Coulter said. Brownback’s spokesman Erik Hotmire said Brownback supports the concept of a museum that teaches the history of the abolitionist movement in Kansas.

Coulter also complained that the committee has lacked input from blacks.

“The lack of black representation on this is really disappointing. We don’t have anybody from the black community that is in on this thing,” he said