Gove County KS Archives History - Books .....The Boom Of 1886 1930
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Book Title: History Of Gove County, Kansas

CHAPTER XII
THE BOOM OF 1886

  The cattlemen were merely making a virtue of necessity in giving way to the
settlers. The country was public land, open to settlement by anybody, and
railroad land. The cattlemen owned none of it; they were merely squatters. A
wave of eastern immigration was once more flooding Kansas, and the cattlemen
could not have held their ground for another season.

  Kansas grew up, so to speak, in the eighties. During that decade her vacant
lands were taken up, her railroads built, her cities established, and the state
settled down to permanent conditions generally. Gove county had lain dormant for
several years but was now to receive its share of the new life which was
flooding the plains. During 1885 and 1886 three new towns and five newspapers
were established, and Gove county changed from a cattle range to an organized
county of more than three thousand souls.

  The boom began to develop in the spring of 1885. Among the first boomers was
E. A. Benson of Davenport, Iowa, who bought 250 sections of the railroad lands
in Gove and Sheridan counties. Later he sold 110,000 acres of these lands to C.
E. Perkins, president of the C. B. & Q railroad "and associates in Boston." Mr.
Benson long since disposed of his holdings, but the Gove County Atlas, published
in 1907, shows that as late as that date Mr. Perkins still held 8,800 acres of
land in the county. Benson and Perkins put their lands on the market and began a
systematic advertising campaign to attract purchasers. Of course in a county
where more than half the land was still public land it was natural that the
homesteads would be taken up much faster than the railroad lands. Besides the
land open to entry there were many homesteads that had been taken in 1878 or
later and afterward abandoned, and these could be obtained by contest proceedings.

  Gove county had been without a newspaper for four years when A. W. Burnett
began the publication of the Pioneer at Buffalo Park, April 16, 1885. The
Pioneer had considerable advertising patronage and five columns of land contest
notices. The law requires that every contest or final proof notice must be
published, and it was chiefly upon this patronage that the frontier newspaper
lived in the homestead days.

  Two more newspapers made their appearance in 1885—the Golden Belt at Grinnell,
first published July 18, and the Cap Sheaf at Grainfield, first published
October 8. Each is well filled with land contest notices. The towns are doing a
brisk business. Each of the county papers teems with uems of new settlers
arriving or new homeseekers making purchases. The first issue of the Cap Sheaf
says "J. B. Beal is credited with saying four years ago that 'anyone that would
lariat the town and brand it could have it.' John is now putting up houses to
rent and we don't believe he ever said it." Somebody started a petition to have
the government take down the Pool fence.

   Buffalo Park had a two day celebration July 3 and 4, 1885, the chief event of
the celebration being that the Buffalo Blues beat the Russell nine one day and
WaKeeney the next. It is evident that the Blues were a good team. They took a
couple trips down the road and beat WaKeeney, Hays and Russell on their own
grounds. They published a challenge to any team west of Topeka to play them a
game on the Buffalo Park grounds for $100 a side—and no takers. The membership
of this championship team of thirty four years ago included T. B. Sloey catcher,
Jack Thomas pitcher, Lew Thomas short stop, ____ Fredenburg first base, E. S.
Wilson second base, Jim Sloey third base and captain Bill Sloey left field, F.
B. Strong center field and manager, Chas. Campbell right field. Of this band
three—F. B. Strong and the Thomas brothers—still live in Gove county.*

* Note 6. 

  The business done by the railroad company is one indication of the way Gove
county was now growing. The receipts at Buffalo Park for August '85, were
$1239.78; for September, $1990.12; October, $1837.50. Grainfield did a still
larger business. The receipts there were in October '84, $767.66, in October
'85, $4282.37; in November '84. $1511.03, in November '85, $4059.06.

  In November, 1885, two new towns were established in the county. The railroad
company had for several years had a switch seven miles southeast of Buffalo Park
at a place it called Melota, but no station had been established. Here in
November the town of Familton was platted by the Familton Town Co. The company
built a two story frame hotel, the Familton Hotel, in the fall of 1885, but no
other buildings were erected till the following spring. The government refused
to establish a postoffice under the name selected for the town, because the name
was too much like some other offices in the state in sound or spelling, so the
name Familton had to be given up and another name selected. The town was finally
called Quinter, after Rev. James Quinter of Huntingdon, Pa., an elder of the
Dunkard or Baptist Brethren church. A strong settlement of the Brethren was
forming around the town, which caused the name to be chosen.

  The Gove City Improvement Co. was organized at Davenport, Iowa, by E. A.
Benson, H. H. Benson, C. E. Perkins and others. It acquired land on the
Hackberry twelve miles south of Grainfield and here in November, 1885, laid out
the town of Gove City. The town was off the line of the railroad but was near
the center of the county (three miles due north of the exact center), and the
promoters made no secret of the fact that Gove City would be a candidate for the
county seat. The first building erected was a two story hotel of stone, the
Benson House, begun in November and completed the following spring.

  The town of Jerome was founded on the Smoky in 1886 and in July of that year
could boast of two general stores, blacksmith shop, restaurant and livery stable
and had taken steps toward building a school house.

  The winter—the hardest ever known for years, the winter which broke up the
Smoky Hill Cattle Pool and strewed the prairie with the carcasses of dead
cattle—put a stop to the boom but the rush was resumed stronger than ever in the
spring of '86. Two new papers appeared, the Gazette at Gove City in April and
the Settlers Guide at Quinter in July. A strong Swedish settlement was being
built up in the southwest part of the county. On one day in March the receipts
of the Grainfield station were $1100, the remittances $700. Twenty five car
loads of freight were received at Buffalo Park in one day in April, while at
Grainfield fifty eight car loads of merchandise and emigrant goods arrived in
one April day; the track would not hold so many, and some of the cars had to be
carried on that day to Grinnell. The "prairies were dotted with schooners",
"emigrants coming in by hundreds". In April the Gazette estimated that new
settlers were arriving at the rate of fifty a day. Men stood in line for days at
the land office at WaKeeney awaiting their turn to file on their claims. A new
slang term was coined —any concern which had all it could do, or more, was said
to be "doing a land office business."

  In spite of the rush the country found time for recreation. The first circus
visited the county, showing at Buffalo Park and at Grinnell; the newspaper
accounts said it was a fraud, and the outfit got away without paying its hotel
and printing bills. Decoration Day was observed at Grainfield, the G. A. R.
posts of Grainfield and Buffalo Park participating. H. H. Benson delivered the
oration of the day. Buffalo Park and Grainfield both wanted to celebrate the
fourth of July. The day fell on Sunday, so Buffalo Park held its celebration on
the 3rd and Grainfield on the 5th. H. H. Benson was orator of the day at Buffalo
Park. The Ellsworth band furnished the music and there were horse races and a
ball game. The Blues met with a set back, being defeated by Ellis 18 to 15.
Grainfield had a pigeon shoot and fire works and an oration by Rev. Aller. A
prize of $50 was hung up for the ball game between Buffalo Park and WaKeeney.
The Blues took the game, 13 to 8, and it was said about $800 changed hands on
the result. The papers estimated that there were fifteen hundred people in
Grainfield that day.


Additional Comments:
History of Gove County, Kansas
by W. P. Harrington

Gove City, Kan.	1930


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