Map of the United States with Kansas highlighted

This is an incomplete list of ghost towns in the state of Kansas.

Causes

There are many reasons as to why a community becomes abandoned (or nearly abandoned).

  • Transportation – With the development of major highways and interstates, people were willing to travel farther for goods and services causing local businesses in smaller towns to lose customers and ultimately close. The more businesses that close the more people are apt to want to move away to a bigger town. Transportation has played a major role in settlement in Kansas. As traffic from the Oregon and Santa Fe Trails increased, towns boomed along them. When railroads were established towns developed along the tracks or even moved to where the tracks were.
  • Politics – In Kansas, the political atmosphere was highly divided. Towns were either pro-slavery or abolitionist. When Kansas became a free state in 1861, pro-slavery towns died out. Survival of a town also depended on if it won the county seat. Towns that were contenders for the county seat and lost typically saw most, if not all, of their town die out.
  • Lack of employment – Towns that catered to a specific industry like coal mining or military housing were boom towns that quickly died when their markets collapsed. Some towns were abandoned in the 1930s during the Dust Bowl period which mainly relied on agriculture.
  • Eminent domain / flood control – Since 1951, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers have sought to control floods through the building of dams along rivers and the resulting outcome is a town having to be moved or abandoned and demolished.
  • Environmental degradation – remnants of lead and zinc mining can cause soil contamination that can render entire communities uninhabitable; e.g. Treece.[1]

List

List of ghost towns in Kansas, which aren't incorporated cities or unincorporated communities:

Allen County

Anderson County

Atchison County

Butler County

Chase County

Cherokee County

Cheyenne County

Clark County

Clay County

Cloud County

Cowley County

Decatur County

Doniphan County

Douglas County

Elk County

Ellis County

Ellsworth County

Finney County

Franklin County

Geary County

Gove County

Graham County

Greeley County

Greenwood County

Harper County

Harvey County

Haskell County

Jewell County

Labette County

Leavenworth County

Lincoln County

Linn County

Logan County

Marion County

Marshall County

Mitchell County

Montgomery County

Morris County

Neosho

Norton County

Osborne County

Ottawa County

Phillips County

Rawlins County

Reno County

Republic County

Rice County

Rooks County

Rush County

Russell County

Seward County

Shawnee County

Sheridan County

Smith County

Stevens County

Sumner County

  • Bushnell
  • Cleardale
  • Doster
  • Ewell
  • Metcalf
  • Roland
  • Sumner City

Thomas County

Trego County

Wabaunsee County

Washington County

Wichita County

See also

References

  1. ↑ NY Times, https://www.nytimes.com/2012/05/20/magazine/last-ones-left-in-treece-kan-a-toxic-town.htm
  2. ↑ "Index of Kansas Places - Kansas Historical Society". www.kshs.org. Retrieved January 9, 2024.
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