Maybe the small towns of Kansas are not disappearing. Maybe, they are like cicadas, coming out of hibernation every 17 years, flourishing for a while and then burrowing back into the ground to wait for a better day.
Small towns in Kansas have taken a hit. Farming has become an agribusiness and so ma and pa can’t make anymore on 160 acres. The railroads that served these small towns have shut down for lack of customers, and whistle stops that became towns are now rusting railroad tracks. More often, the tracks are pulled up and sent to scrap.
Small towns need to serve a purpose. If near a larger town, the small town is a refuge from the noise and hubbub, a place where screen doors still exist and kids roam free after dark.
Out in the hinterlands, small towns need to operate on less, less people, less business, less everything. And for a lot of people less is more. Farm living is the life. Picking up mail in town, a way to meet neighbors, and a cup of coffee at the cafe on Main Street a way to catch up.
The summer of 2016 was a good one for most.
More rain meant a bountiful wheat crop, but a bad year for farmers who with prices falling get less for more wheat. I was out and about as usual and happened upon Howard, Kansas. It is the county seat of Elk County, population 697, the last time the US census was taken, and down from its peak of 1,000 in the 1880’s. The Santa Fe Railroad ran a branch to Howard beginning in 1879, but it is gone now. Steve Sandifer posted on Youtube an HO scale Santa Fe model railroad of the Howard Branch with stops in Moline, Climax, and Eureka, which is amusing.
One of the interesting buildings in Howard is the Howard National Bank. It opened in 1887 and printed $729,920 dollars worth of national currency before it stopped printing money in 1935. Wow!
Howard is a quiet town. It is a place where grass grows on Main Street and a kid can ride his bike in the middle of the street and go to the library and read.
Howard, Kansas
They came from New York, Illinois, Indiana, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Kentucky, Misouri, Prussia, England and Scotland, the hardy pioneers who settled Elk County and Howard in the 1870’s. You can read about them in Cutler’s History of the State of Kansas, Elk County.
Let us pick one at random, A. Crismas, farmer, born in 1820 in Surrey, England, came to Elk County in 1871 and ended up with:
“a farm on Section 12, Township 30, Range 11, consisting of 240 acres situated on Hitchin Creek. His place has forty acres of fine timber, two coal mines with four-inch veins, plenty of living water, 110 acres in cultivation, fine residence and other buildings. and he is extensively engaged in stock-raising. Is one of the leading men of the township and a No. 1 citizen in every respect. Was married in 1847 to Miss Catharine Welch, of Toronto, Canada.
They have ten children – J. W., Jane, Mary A., William J., Ellen M., George, Harriet, Agnes A. and A. A. He is a member of Elk County Horticultural Society.”
Abandoned, old, and interesting Kansas 