Nonchalanta - a Dead town in Ness County.

The Nonchalanta hotel

A big thank you to Tom Reed, who hails from the ghost town of Ravanna in Finney County, Tom McCoy of Ness City and Harlan Nuss, who rents the pasture where Nonchalanta once thrived.

They gave me a great tour of the ruins here. They were kind enough to spend much of the afternoon talking to me and showing me around. 

Remember, this is private property. No trespassing!

This old stone house was once the site of the Nonchalanta post office.

Just give it a "d---" name

With the promise of free land, Fred Roth and his family came in covered wagons from Missouri to Ness County.

So did others. John Silas Collins, a circuit-riding Methodist minister, who arrived in 1879 and began work to prove up his homestead, according to an article by local historian, the late Jan Gantz, which was published in the Ness County News.

They began building sod homes and plowing up the grass. 

With pioneers came the need for a town. Homesteader Lewis Odom in 1885 decided to plat a town and asked another local, Dr. W.A. Yingling, to come up with a name.

"And I don't care a d--- what kind of name it is, just so it's a taking name," Odom told Yingling according to several historical articles. 

So, as the tale goes, Yingling called it Nonchalant, after the French word of that very idea, and then decided to add the "a."

Odom loved it and began promoting Nonchalanta with the idea the railroad was coming. One newspaper printed on May 23, 1885: "New town of Nonchalanta laid out." By September, lots were reported to be selling for $15 to $85, according to the book "Ness, Western County, Kansas" by Minnie Dubbs Millbrook.

Momentum continued and folks prepared for a promised railroad. Nonchalanta would soon have a livery, a drug store, three-story hotel, real estate office and a general store, Gantz wrote in her article. There was a Methodist church and newspaper. A quarter-mile away, a man named McCandish operated a small country store and post office that the government had previously dubbed Candish. By 1887, the post office was renamed Nonchalanta.

Photo courtesy of Cheryl McVicker Lewis. This is the Nonchalanta school. Her grandmother, Annie Slagle McVicker, was the teacher and Annie's siblings are in the photo.

In fact, said Wichita resident Cheryl McVicker Lewis, whose family homestead in the area, the Nonchalanta newspaper from August 1887 showed 22 businesses advertising in it. 

"And it said there were also several more carpenters, two more blacksmiths and several stone masons and plasters," said Lewis, who grew up near the town site and has researched local and family history. "There were plans to build 100 houses in the next six months."

Folks had began construction on the bank, as well as more stores, restaurants and a Grand Army of the Republic post. There was even talk of a summer resort called "Wildhorse Lake" - located around a natural depression where the wild horses would water, wrote Gantz.

Gantz also reported that lots were advertised in Folsom Heights - "a beautiful suburb overlooking the city."

Great tour by Tom Reed, left, Harlan Nuss, center, and Tom McCoy.

And, in 1887, according to the book by Millbrook, the newspaper advertised the town as "the magic young city of the plains, with six public wells with pure water, a hundred houses to be built in early spring and a railroad to be built during the coming summer."

Sam Howell was one of the business owners. According to family history, he worked on the railroads across western Kansas, drove freight and was employed on area ranches before homesteading and starting a feed store in Nonchalanta. 

There he met Susie Helen Corbet, a young girl working at the Nonchalanta hotel, which was operated by John Rogers, a man who would later become governor of Washington, according to Corbet's writings discovered by Lewis.

Susie and Sam married in Nonchalanta in April 1888 - the same year the school was finished.

The town was buzzing. 

"Dancing, baseball games and picnics were part of the entertainment," wrote Gantz. 

Nonchalanta Methodist Church. It was founded in 1887 and had a minister until 1918. The church continued with a Sunday School until 1925. The building was sold and moved to Ness City.

"Eliza - A Generational Journey" - Morton City - an exoduster community

 Crystal Bradshaw's book chronicle's her five-great grandmother, who was a slave for 40 years. Eliza Bradshaw was part of an exoduster group in the late 1870s that helped the now defunct town of Morton City in Hodgeman County.

Courtesy of Crystal Bradshaw

It seemed, at first, that Eliza Bradshaw’s life was long buried beneath her tombstone in the town cemetery – which just marks her birth and death.

Crystal Bradshaw knew her distant grandmother was born into slavery. She knew Eliza was an exoduster who came to Hodgeman County with her family and 100 others in search of a life free of racism and poverty after the Civil War. On the sparsely populated, windswept prairie, they began building a small community they called Morton City.

But when Crystal was tasked to research her family history for one of her high school classes at Hodgeman County High School, she found few answers.

Courtesy of Kansas Memory

“A lot of people in my high school class knew about their family members but not many in my family knew where the Bradshaw side came from,” said Crystal, 21, now a junior at the University of Kansas.

For the past five years, Crystal has been combing newspaper articles and research papers to learn more about her family’s past. She compiled her information into her first nonfiction novel – “Eliza – A Generational Journey,” which she self-published this fall.

She saved her money from her three jobs to publish 50 of the 133-page books. Crystal works as a resident assistant in a college dorm and as a communications specialist and office manager for The Project on the History of Black Writing – part of KU’s English Department. She also earns money as a writer.

In the book, Crystal preserves the highs and lows of Eliza’s life journey – which parallels a harsh time in history.

Eliza was born a slave, growing up in poverty in a one-room cabin with no windows. At age 7 she was sold to another planter. At 17, she was sold again to a cruel slave owner. There were beatings. There were sorrows.

Courtesy of Crystal Bradshaw

And, even when freed, Eliza and her family faced more challenges because of their race and their new found freedom.

Crystal was shocked when she began delving into Eliza’s story, but was also disappointed that it had nearly faded away as the years went by.

“How do you let this rich history just slip away?” Crystal asked, adding. “That is why I didn’t want to just compile my research. That is why I wanted to write a book to preserve it so future Bradshaws can go and see where they came from.” 

To read more of Crystal's story, click here.

Morton City - a dead exoduster colony in Hodgeman County

In the years following the Civil War, a couple dozen black colonies dotted Kansas.

That included a short-lived settlement in Hodgeman County.

After Pap Singleton established Nicodemas in northwest Kansas, exodusters arrived in Kinsley in March 1878. They headed into Hodgeman County and began to form Morton City, which they named after Oliver P. Morton, according to the book "Exodusters: Black Migration to Kansas After Reconstruction" written by Neil Irvin Painter.

Benton Butler, James Board, Carrell Lytle, George Perry, Frank Harris and William Maxwell were black Union soldiers who moved to Hodgeman County sometime in the 1870s, according to a February 2003 article in The News. They are buried in the Jetmore cemetery with other pioneers. The men and their families were part of an early surge of migration before the "Great Exodus" from the South in 1879.

Most who left during the exodus were responding to the South's reconstruction, which resulted in violence and economic dependency for black residents, said Rita Napier in the article, who was then an associate professor of history at the University of Kansas.

A dream of free land spurred them on. Under the 1862 Homestead Act, the federal government provided acre to any settler, regardless of race or sex, who improved the land for five years.

"This is to lay before your minds a few sketches of what great advantages there are for the great mass of people of small means that are emigrating West to come and settle in the county of Hodgeman," one poster advertised. "And more especially the colored people, for they are the ones that want to find the best place for climate and for soil for the smallest capital."

Migration was led by Thomas Moore, said Crystal Bradshaw, 21, who wrote a book about her family history - which traces her five-great grandmother Eliza from slavery to Kansas.

According to Painter's book, the homesteaders had a hard time building the settlement and taking care of their homesteads. Eventually, they focused on just their homesteads.

However, only one settler, equipped with a team of livestock, could grow crops. Others had to make due with gardens and hiring themselves out to the area's established farmers.

Most of the settlers moved away - scattering to nearby communities, said Mary Ford, with the Haun Museum in Jetmore.

Wilburn Bradshaw continues to farm in the area, Crystal Bradshaw said. 

Crystal Bradshaw will have a book signing for her new book, "Eliza: A Generational Journey," from 1 to 3 p.m. Dec. 22 at the Hodgeman County Museum. 

Refreshements will be provided. 

The books costs $14.95; the ebook is $9.95. To order the Kindle version, visit http://hutch.news/Bradshaw. Or visit Crystal's Facebook page at www.facebook.com/CrystalBradshawWriting.

A little family history from Corwin, Kansas - a dead town in Harper County

Desiree (Kirby) Rahman

Ingram homestead in NW Oklahoma c. 1897 - 1900  

Often after my dead town stories are published, I get tidbits from people who had relatives in a particular town. 

That was the case with Corwin, my latest story. The Harper County town today is a shell of its former, vibrant, self.

Here's some info and photos sent by Desiree (Kirby) Rahman. Rahman grew up in Hutchinson and her mother still lives in town. Here grandfather was the well-digger's grandson mentioned in the story. 

Here's what Rahman sent:

Charles Ingram's family, c. 1910 

The family moved to Alfalfa County, OK in 1895, after the Land Run. Here's a little more about Charles Ingram. Everything I have always says the family lived in Anthony, but apparently they were in Corwin... My grandmother was born on the farm shown in the "homestead" picture. If you look at the woman in the picture (my great-grandmother) she may be pregnant - if so, I'm guessing that she is carrying my grandmother which would date the picture as 1900. I don't know this for a fact, but it makes a good story!

Text from newspaper clipping, name of paper & date not included, probably The Cherokee Messenger & Republican, Cherokee, OK, Fri Jan 18, 1935

Mr. and Mrs. C. M. Ingram Observe Golden Wedding Anniversary January 13th.

Sunday, January 13, the children and Mr. and Mrs. C. M. Ingram gathered at the farm house five miles west of Cherokee, in honor of the fiftieth wedding anniversary of their parents.

Mr. Ingram and his wife, who was Miss Cynthia Millay, daughter of Rev. and Mrs. D. W. Millay, were married January 15, 1885, at the home of the bride’s parents, near Coloma, MO. Dr. S. D. Millay, grandfather of the bride, performed the ceremony.

The newly married couple left soon for Anthony, Kansas, where they made their home for several years. In 1895, Mr. and Mrs. Ingram, with their four children Edwin, May, Ida, and Edith, moved to the farm which is now their home. Here, the two younger children, Pearl and Charles, were born.

Mr. and Mrs. Ingram were typical pioneers. Mr. Ingram is widely known in this section of the country, having drilled wells since locating here; also being in various business enterprises and politics...

To read more on Corwin, click here.

Frederick, population nine, lingers as Rice County ponders town's future

Frederick, Kansas, population nine or 10, on a good day. 

I got an email in early June from a resident in the small town I live in. She said her aunt, Wanda Plautz would be excellent to talk to about the history of Frederick, Kansas.

But my research lead me to a deeper story. The town has been incorporated since the late 1800s. Now the third-class city of just nine residents must decide if it will live or die.

No one ran for election in April. Moreover, no one voted or wrote in a name. There is no official mayor or council.

Here's an excerpt from my story:

Frederick is on life support. 

Melode Huggans knows this. She's seen the signs since she was a little girl, visiting her grandparents, who lived on the same parcel she does today.

The school at Frederick

The schoolhouse is empty − stripped of its desks. A jail cell sits in the middle of a field of wheat stubble, the metal bars and innards rusting. Old playground equipment and paint-worn cars are barely visible amid the trees after decades of neglect. 

Now loved ones like Huggans are faced with a difficult decision on whether it is time for this town to face a natural death.

Ten people call Frederick home − on a good day, that is. It once had as many as 150 people, along with grocery stores, a lumberyard, blacksmiths and restaurants. 

Yet, on this July morning, Huggans pointed up an empty street in front of the home she and husband, Steve, have lived in for 19 years. This was the main thoroughfare, she said. But every business has vanished. There isn't even a foundation left. 

Frederick, an official Kansas third-class city, is almost a ghost town. 

In the April election, no one ran for mayor or for any of the city council seats. Not one resident wrote in a name, either. In fact, it appears no one even voted.

The old jail still stands

For the first time since the town's inception in 1887, Frederick has no leaders. The town's budget is due Aug. 25.

At a recent Rice County Commission meeting, commissioners and the county clerk discussed if it is time the town calls it quits and unincorporates. 

Huggans doesn't know the answer. She serves as the Frederick city clerk, but isn't sure the next time the former council will meet. Her husband is on the city council. But their thoughts have been on other things. Melode has been battling breast cancer, diagnosed in April.

Frederick, however, is a part of her life. 

"My grandparents lived here," she said. "It was a town when they lived here. My mom was born here, went to school here."

To read the rest of the story and see more photos and a video, visit www.KansasAgland.com. 

Corwin, Kansas, a dead town in Harper County

Rice County farmer Delmar Conner dropped by a book a couple years ago on the history of Corwin, Kansas.
He wasn't from Corwin, but he thought it sounded interesting.


So, on a hot June morning, on my way to a wheat field near Kiowa, I ventured to the tiny ghost town.

There isn't much there. And what is there is blocked out by trees. That includes the school and a few homes.


I was greeted by an elevator employee, who said he had been interviewed once before, when the nearby town of Hazelton was evacuated for a gas leak (or something to that affect.) He directed me down the road to Monty Whitaker, who has lived in the town for more than 20 years.


He estimated about 10 people live in Corwin, which includes a son and family.


Corwin once had grocery stores, blacksmiths, church and the bank. It had a school and an assortment of houses with families. The elevator, however, is the only business remaining.

To read about Corwin, visit our website, KansasAgland.Com. Here's a link to the story and photos.

Kiowa County dead towns: Reeder, Janesville, Brenham

Greensburg resident continues search and digging around several long-dead towns

GREENSBURG - Traveling down a dirt path sandwiched between a wheat field and pasture, Ed Schoenberger abruptly motions to stop the car.

"You're now in downtown Reeder," he says as he steps out of the vehicle - facing the cold wind that whips across the wide-open prairie on this early March day.

But all around him, there is nothing here but farmland and grass. Reeder, once a bustling community where residents dreamed of a railroad, has disappeared.

Underneath the ground, however, the memory of Reeder still exists. Reeder began in 1885 but only lasted a handful of years, with the post office closing in 1891. The railroad never came, and the community eventually died with its remains buried in shallow graves below the prairie grass.

Schoenberger pulls out his metal detector and begins finding century-old trash - largely sardine cans that settlers left behind.

Reeder's tale mirrors countless towns across Kansas, including several in Kiowa County. Schoenberger has been working to preserve those memories through his research and amature archeolgoy.

Meanwhile, Schoenberger is also researching the towns of Janesville, Brenham and others, finding artifacts along the way.

Greensburg resident and historian Ed Schoenberger uses a metal detector to find items at at the townsite of Reeder. 

Sardine cans and fruit cans were common in the 1880s and are often found when metal detecting around townsites.

Saunders, Kansas, a dead town in Stanton County

Looking into Kansas. Saunders is in the background

Saunders, notice the dust storm haze.

The little border stop greets you as you enter Kansas -- along with a windshield of dust.


And on this late summer day, it seems, the dust is especially bad at Saunders, which sits right next to the Colorado border along a stretch of Highway 160 that, for miles, is nearly empty of people.


But for Minnie Watson, the whirling earth she experienced here during the 1930s was much worse than today. She and her family moved to Saunders in 1937. She was in second grade.


Her family had left Plains, Kansas -- an area still plagued by dust storms, although it wasn't quite in the heart of it like Stanton County. In a time when jobs were hard to come by, her father had secured the position of elevator manager for the Collingwood Co.


They moved into Saunders' single residence, which also was the elevator scale house and office.


Here, their power was from the wind, she said. While they had enough for lights and radio, it wasn't enough, though, to power a refrigerator or washer, which they had left behind at Plains.


It took a little while for the family to adjust to the stark landscape. Upon seeing their new home, "my mother cried and cried."


"It wasn't quite as dusty at Plains," Watson, 86, of Manter, recalls. "But at Saunders, it was just dirt."

To read the full story on Saunders, click here.

Yankton, Kansas a defunct town in Harper County

Photos by Sandra Milburn. Concrete still remains at Yankton townsite

A few clues about Yankton

I got an email after the 2014 Kansas State Fair from Dan Stringer, who said he once lived at the townsite of Yankton in Harper County. So, photographer Sandra Milburn and I picked Stringer up where he was living in Argonia and trekked to the former townsite near Attica. 

Harper County has more than 30 extinct villages – towns like Joppa, Pilot Knob, Shook and Ruby, according to the Kansas State Historical Society. While some have chronicled histories, the details of Yankton’s brief existence are few. There is no evidence of its birth or how and when, exactly, it died. 

        There are some clues however. 

Perhaps the town was started by the Oliver family. According to the book “Harper County Story” written in 1968, Yankton was a pioneer village in Ruella township. It had a post office, which opened Aug. 6, 1883. The postmaster was Stephen C. Oliver. He also owned the Yankton Hotel, livery and stable. 

Meanwhile, Marcus Oliver,   postmaster Oliver’s brother, was in real estate of the town, having “a number of city lots for sale cheap,” according to the book. He also ran a peanut stand in connection with his real estate business on the north side of the Yankton square.

Yankton even had a newspaper, the Yankton Gleaner, an eight-page paper devoted to Yankton and its vicinity. It sold for $2 in advance.

And, for a time, people came to the area and settled here, calling Yankton home. A.J. Barr was a bricklayer, plasterer and sod carpenter. R.S. Sullivan was a shoemaker and cobbler. L.A. Jones was a hairdresser.

There was also Dr. Joseph Brockway. He settled with his wife and six of his children – noting in a letter to family that his daughter was at a university in Iowa.

His family’s roots are deep, he wrote to the receiver – noting his family history goes back to “the Massachusetts colonial tradition.” Two family members were massacred at a fort on the banks of the Connecticut River at the close of the Revolutionary War, he wrote.

The letter, the property of the University of Kansas’ Kenneth Spencer Research Library, was dated May 1884 and gave no details about life in Yankton, except to mention he was writing from Yankton in Harper County, Kansas. Brockway did write that he hadn’t finished his doctorate and was taking classes at Ann Arbor University.

There are few mentions of Brockway in other publications. One genealogical document noted he also was an attorney. The Annual Report by the U.S. Bureau of Animal Industry lists Brockway fighting southern cattle fever on his farm south and west of Harper along Nine Cottonwoods Creek in 1883.

Brockway must have eventually left Kansas, although I'm not sure when. It could have been after Yankton's demise. An obituary for a Dr. Joseph Brockway in the Wichita Daily Eagle published in May 1911 said he died in Aline, Oklahoma, which is about 70 miles from Yankton.

Then the trail of Yankton’s story runs cold. Brockway’s obituary never mentioned Yankton. Even Postmaster Oliver’s obituary never mentioned Yankton or his time as a postmaster. It said he settled in the Attica area, just two miles to the west of the Yankton townsite, in 1882. He is buried in the Attica Cemetery.

What little details there are show the town was short-lived. The post office closed one year after it opened in October 1884.

Stringer said the stories he heard was Yankton was near the site of an Osage Village. In Souix and Osage, the name means “village at the end.” Yankton residents planned for a railroad. However, the tracks were laid to the north, going through the nearby town of Crystal Springs, instead.

On our trip to the site, Stringer pointed out where he and his second wife, Phyllis, lived. It was once the Yankton hotel and saloon, with a brothel upstairs, he said. They ran a Christian ministry from the site, which is now being used by a local church.  

To read the whole story on KansasAgland, click here

An old store photo from Carniero, Kansas.

I received this photo earlier this summer from Joy. It's of one of the old, Carniero, Kansas, stores. I love these old photos! here is a note from Joy.

I have roots in Carneiro and Kanopolis.  In fact my dad was born there to John and Ethel Ulrickson.  John, my grandfather was a blacksmith in the Salt Mine.  I want to share with you one of the pictures I have identifying a building that may still exist in Carneiro.  It was owned and run by O.B. Smith and Sons.  I believe he also became a judge in the county of Carneiro.  Time period - around the 1890-1900s.  

I don't think this is the same store that is still standing in Carniero - which is featured on the cover of our book - Dead Towns of Central and Western Kansas - but it could be. Thanks so much, Joy! And if anyone else has some great old photos, don't hesitate to share.

Here's an earlier post from Carniero.

School photos from Saratoga, Kansas, a dead town in Pratt County

I was cleaning out my email and noticed this old photos of the Saratoga school that was sent to me last summer. To find out about Saratoga, a dead town in Pratt County, click here. A clump a trees at the site mark where the school stood.

These photos are courtesy of the Pratt County Historical Society.

Langley, Kansas, old photos, old stories

I have driven by Langley many a time over the years. But I have to thank a man named Paul Burmeister, of Claflin, who came by the office one day, saying he always wanted to know more about the little stop in the dirt road by Kanopolis Lake. 

Here's a few stories Burmeister tracked down for me through his diggings at the Ellsworth County Historical Society. The old photos were provided by Max Buffington, who owns the Marquette hardware and is a local historian.

The Langley Ladies Literary Club, 1916.

The depot in Langley, taken in 1915. The railroad closed the depot in 1951.

The lumberyard, probably taken in the 1910s.

Stories of Langley

Clayton Griggs wrote to the Ellsworth County Historical Society in 1961 with one handed-down family story of Langley.

"When I was in about the second grade at Langley School, Mr. Charlie Ruppert (an old man at that time) came to school one day and told us about a band of outlaws that had lived in a cabin on the creek years ago. (Mr. Ruppert's parents were one of the first settlers in this community.) These three outlaws were notorious train robbers until the army sent a detachment to clean them out. The gang was killed. ... Mr. Ruppert said that undoubtedly some of their ill-gotten loot is buried somewhere around the vicinity since none of them escaped."I later found the rock foundation outline of the cabin and dug down through the black soil about two feet where I found ashes and an old knife."

Another incident occurred before the town was founded and was recounted in a Feb. 18, 1982, story in The Ellsworth Reporter.

The article stated that the newspaper's 1882 edition printed a story that Philip Agley, a farmer residing in what would soon be the Langley area, "had been foully dealt with and then burned in his house."

"On Sunday evening, Jan. 1, W.E. Graham, a nephew of the murdered man, was arrested under a complaint made by Harry Anderson, stating he believed Graham had committed the murder," the newspaper reported.

Anderson, according to John Hughes, his great-nephew, had seen Agley's dugout burning and pulled Agley from the fire.

According to the story, Graham didn't have a fair trial. Instead, a few hundred men from all parts of the region assembled at the courthouse and rushed in, overpowering the sheriff and his guards.

The mob took Graham to the first telegraph pole by the courthouse "where he was tried found guilty and strung up by the neck until he, W.E. Graham, was dead! dead! dead!" according to the Jan. 5, 1882, issue of The Reporter.

1917 = can't figure out how to flip this photo as it appears the right way.

The Methodist Church closed in 1964 and joined the Marquette church.

Langley, Kansas, an Ellsworth County dead town

On a cool, crisp fall day, I found Langley.
There wasn't much left of this once vibrant stop in the road.

Only a few homes dot the once bustling main drags, which are separated by an overgrown railroad bed. A woman works around her mailbox and barking dogs greet the few passing cars.

Down a dirt road, at what would have been the outskirts to town, is the cemetery.

I stopped by Marquette's hardware store, where owner Max Buffington recalled  to me his first trip to the elevator hauling a pickup truckload of grain in the early 1950s.

“I was 9 years old,” Buffington said, noting he was a little small to drive a truck, but the elevator man helped him get stopped.

Langley is no longer the vibrant town of his childhood, he said, nor is it even a fragment of its size when his great-grandfather, George Buffington, first settled the area in 1898, establishing a cattle ranch.

Pappy Helms' old store. It was used in a scene for the movie Ace Eli and Roger of the Skies filmed in the 1970s starring Cliff Robertson.

The 1880s were a prosperous time in Kansas history as more pioneers moved west and towns began to form along the unplowed landscape. Langley was like many prairie towns. The Missouri Pacific Railroad was building thousands of miles of track through Kansas and needed water stations or tank stops every 10 miles for the engines.

A man named Langley and another man named McCracken decided to invest in land, hoping to cash in on the area they thought might someday be a important shipping point.

They formed Langley on 38 acres of land purchased from area farmer Job Fowler, a homesteader who had first come to the country in 1873.

According to one account documented at the Ellsworth County Historical Society, Langley soon realized he wasn’t going to get rich quick. He learned the railroad, the Union Pacific, was going to go through Kanopolis instead.

“All they got out of it was to have a town named after them,” Langley’s daughter, Jane Langley Board, wrote in a letter to the Langley City Council in the 1950s or 1960s, although the town was never incorporated or had a city council.

Langley, however, would become a train pit stop, forming about 1886 when the Missouri Pacific Railroad passed through southeast Ellsworth County, according to an article by Judy Lily for a local newspaper.

At first, the town was just a depot and two dugouts. A post office was established in April 1887 with Joseph Byrne as the first postmaster, according to the Kansas State Historical Society.

The town soon began to grow. There was a general store owned by J.R. Adams. It was destroyed by fire in 1902, according to a transcript of a talk given by John Hughes in 1984, a man who was raised in the Langley area.

Hughes reported that Job Fowler then built a large two-story building with an upstairs hall for entertainment, as well as groceries. A locker plant was later added on the building.

Phillip Fredrick operated a hardware and lumber store, which also had a full line of cured meats, coal, farm machinery, along with lumber and hardware, Hughes said.

The Methodist Church was built in 1894 and a cemetery was established. There also were stockyards and a blacksmith. A milling company in Marquette had an elevator.

Another historical account from the Ellsworth Historical Society states Langley had a hotel, two garages, a livery stable, creamery and barber shop.

Buffington said he remembers a man named Pappy Helms running a small grocery and filling station on the northeast edge of town.

And, while unincorporated, Langley, at one time, had more than 300 residents, according to the county historical society documentation.

The Langley Cemetery still reminds folks the name of the area.

A few stone remnants - not sure what was once in this location.

A view from one of the main streets of Langley. A few homes are on the left side of the photo. To the right is the old railroad bed.

Max Buffington holds wood from the old Langley hardware and lumber.

Wood from the Langley Lumber