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.

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.

A little history on Fort Zarah, Allison Ranche and the town of Zarah - Barton County, Kansas

Photographer Lindsey and I ventured here more than a month ago. We found little left of any of the sites, although we really didn't know where to look.

I want to thank Robert Yarmer for his help in sharing his wife's family history. Here's a little bit from my latest dead town story.

In the summer of 1855, when prairie pioneers Williams Allison and Francis Booth came to what would someday be Barton County, there was nothing here but windswept prairie, Indians and buffalo along with the occasional schooner heading toward Santa Fe on the Santa Fe Trail.
Fort Larned wouldn’t be established for another few years and there was little settlement west. Nevertheless, the two men decided to build a settlement along Walnut Creek on the trail – offering supplies and respite to those making the journey.
These days, there is little left of the settlements that sprang up along the trail just east of Great Bend – a few stones in a field, remnants of dugouts and a handful of civilian graves deep below a field of greening wheat.

The autumn 1966 cover of the Kansas Historical Quarterly features a water color of Fort Zarah on the Santa Fe Trail as illustrated by Henry Worrall.

Allison Ranche, along with a town of Zarah that would develop a short distance to the north about 15 years later, have both disappeared – meeting the fate of more than 6,000 other settlements that once populated the state in the latter half of the 1800s.

A trading post
William Allison, a man with just one arm, and Francis Booth had become familiar with the route as former conductors of the monthly mail, according the Kansas State Historical Society. They had encountered Indians along the trail and knew of the hazards of the prairie.
Therefore, 132 miles beyond Council Grove, they established a trading post on Walnut Creek, located in the domain of the nomadic Plains Indian tribes and of the buffalo range.
The July 1855 issues of the Independence, Mo.-based publication, the Occidental Messenger, gave this account of the pioneers.
‘Mr. Wm. Allison and Booth, known as famed prairie men, have determined to make a settlement at Walnut Creek on the Santa Fe road. A short time since . . . they started on an expedition to the gold region; their mules and provisions giving out, and not being able to purchase any on the road from any train, they abandoned the idea of going further toward the Wichita diggings, and returned here, determined to settle on Walnut Creek. Booth left a month or two since, and Allison this week, and from last reports of Booth’s progress, he was busily engaged in building houses and corrals.
This is the first attempt at building by citizens made West of Council Grove, and we hope it may grow up in a short time a flourishing settlement. The men at the head of this enterprise are well known here, and distinguished for their energy and determination, they have no fear about them. ... This settlement will be another stopping point on the route to New Mexico and will make, in a little while, the road less dangerous by lessening the distance between civilized points and affording those in danger or want an opportunity to obtain relief.”
On August 25, the Occidental Messenger also reported that Allison and Booth’s post was nearing completion, with the men hoping to open trade to Indians and any travelers who needed “provision and aid as they journey.”
In December 1856, a post office was established at the ranche, with Allison as postmaster, according to the historical society.
In February 1857, the Santa Fe Gazette published this notice that Allison and Booth had established a trading house and general depot at Walnut Creek on the trail, having on hand groceries, provisions, forage and corrals, according to the historical society article. However, by September, the partnership ended. An article in the Santa Fe Gazette a month later reported: The Mexican who brutally murdered Mr. Booth and Walnut Creek last month, by splitting his head open with an ax, was arrested in San Miguel County last week.”
Meanwhile, according to the historical society, Allison continued to prosper as train traffic boomed. Those venturing toward Pikes Peak in search of gold took the mountain branch of the road to head to Colorado.
Despite his success, Allison died in 1859 of heart failure.

Peacock and Rath
Following Allison’s death, George Peacock took over the ranche.
Peacock’s time at the post, however, was short. Kiowa war chief Satank was arrested after almost passing out from drinking too much at Peacock’s post. Satank escaped but asked Peacock to write a letter of introduction saying he was a good Indian. Not counting on Satank having the letter translated, Peacock instead headed warning to those who read it – saying the Indian was treacherous and dangerous.
According to the state historical society, in the fall of 1860, Satank led warriors to the ranch and killed Peacock and five other men and stole all of the livestock.
Trader and buffalo hunter named Charles Rath took over the trading post next, and he expanded the operation, even helping establish a toll bridge across Walnut Creek.
Meanwhile, as attacks subsided, the military abandoned Fort Zarah in 1869.

Unearthing remains of the ranch house at Walnut Creek Crossing of the Santa Fe Trail (near Great Bend) as supervised by State Historical Society archeologists May 31, 1969. The photograph was taken looking north along the west footings.

The town of Zarah
Not long after Fort Zarah’s abandonment, a town by the same name was formed on the edge of the fort’s property, just north of Allison’s Ranche, Yarmer said.
It was 1870, says Yarmer, adding his wife’s great great uncle, Titus Buckbee, a cattleman, was one of the founders.
Back then, Yarmer said, “everyone wants to start a town, sell lots and be a mayor. That was where the money was.”
Buckbee had been in the Civil War before venturing west. His prison stay at Andersonville during the war hindered his health, Yarmer said.
Zarah would have a blacksmith, a grocery and a livery, among a handful of other stores. In 1871, Buckbee became the town’s postmaster, becoming the first postmaster since Barton became a county.
It also had a murder. Buckbee’s brother-in-law Zach Light was minding the store for Buckbee when a man came in asking for crackers, according to the book “Deadly Dozen: Forgotten Gunfighters of the Old West, Volume 2” by Robert K. DeArment. The man wanted cheese for his crackers. Light said he had none.
“This is a hell of a town,” the man said, adding Zarah was letting Great Bend “get away with things.”
Light said if he didn’t shut up, he would shoot, according to the book. And he did, hitting the man in the forehead. Light fled and, despite being arrested by authorities, never stood trial for the killing.
The town went on for a time, but Zarah’s existence wouldn’t last. Great Bend leaders were working to gain the county seat title. Formed in 1871, town leaders knew survival depended on whether they could secure the honor. An election in 1872 decided the towns’ fates. Ellinwood would receive 22 votes, Great Bend 144 and Zarah 33.
Also, Yarmer said, Santa Fe Railroad had reached Barton County that year and didn’t put a depot in Zarah.
“Politicians from Illinois – they knew how to grease the skid,” Yarmer said, adding the story is these Great Bend officials “bought cases of whiskey and dined the railroad. Zarah tried to do the same, but didn’t have the moxie to do it.”
Angry, Zarah folks moved most of the buildings to Ellinwood’s downtown. Fires destroyed the buildings, Yarmer said.

Little left
Today, there is little left of this area’s early settlement. A sign on the side of the road near Great Bend tells the history of Fort Zarah, although the park isn’t located on the actual fort site. A display at the Barton County Museum also shows artifacts found from digging exhibitions, Neuforth said.

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.

Photos of Densmore, a Norton County dead town

I want to thank Lois Archer who provided me with these photos of Densmore. Densmore is in Norton County - a little town where just a handful of people of reside. This ghost town, however, has several old structures still standing, giving those who pass through a glimpse of what was once a vibrant town.

The elevator. It no longer is in operation. The railroad tracks are long gone, too.

Only about four homes are occupied in Densmore. I don't believe this is one of them.

I believe this is the old station/shop.

The Catholic Church. It's among one of the best structures still standing. It closed in the early 1990s.

An old dilapidated home in Densmore.

Here's another one of Densmore's many old homes. It looks like it was really stately at one time.

An old water well - cool.

There are several empty, old houses in Densmore.

Target practice.

Here's the steps going to the Free Methodist Church at Densmore.

Free Methodist Church

Free Methodist Church

Inside the church, you can still see the woodwork.

It appears the church once had a balcony.

Perhaps this area was where the minister stood.

Anyone need to go to the bathroom? :)

Densmore school.

Densmore school. Both the elementary and high school closed in the 1960s. The high school closed first, in 1965.

One of the Densmore schools. What remains.

Densmore school.

One of the old schools at Densmore. There isn't much left.