If you are here, standing before the general store and post office at Bodarc, Kansas, you probably made a wrong turn.
Bodarc, Kansas general store and post office
Bois d’arc
Bodarc, Kansas is off the main highway, about 3 miles south and east of Augusta, east of Highway 77, before one gets to Douglass. There it is on the west side of Bloomington Township where the road makes a bend over the river, on the west side, marked by a house. The proper spelling of the town name should be Bois d’arc, as the spot is named for the Osage Orange tree, now quite common along the hedge rows and fields. This French term means “tree of the bow”, named for the Osage Indians who used its hard and beautiful wood to make their bows.
Bloomington Township, historical atlas of Butler County, Kansas 1885
The name has had several corruptions and now locals call the spot at the crossing of the Little Walnut River Bodarc.
Lost Kansas Communities
Bodarc never officially became a town. The site was unofficially founded in 1875 and included at one time a mill, general store and post office, to the west a schoolhouse, plus a church and cemetery. The bridge was built to accommodate travel by farmers east of the river to the church and cemetery on the west side of the river.
There is nice history of Bodarc online.
Abandoned, old, and interesting Kansas 