Editing Frontenac, Kansas (section)

==History==
Frontenac was established as a [[coal mining]] town in 1886 in the Cherokee-Crawford Coal Fields in the western Ozark Plateau.<ref>http://www.kshs.org/p/kansas-historical-quarterly-former-mining-communities/13222 "Former Mining Communities of the Cherokee-Crawford Coal Field of Southeastern Kansas"</ref><ref>{{Cite web | url=http://www.kgs.ku.edu/Publications/Bulletins/24/index.html | title=KGS--Bulletin 24--Southeastern Kansas Coal Field in Crawford, Cherokee, and Labette Counties }}</ref><ref>[https://web.archive.org/web/20031019124126/http://kancoll.org/khq/1972/72_2_powell.htm kancoll.com]</ref>

A post office was opened in Frontenac in 1887.<ref>{{cite web |url=http://www.kshs.org/geog/geog_postoffices/search/county:CR |title=Kansas Post Offices, 1828-1961 (archived) |publisher=Kansas Historical Society |access-date=6 June 2014 |url-status=dead |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20131009124740/http://www.kshs.org/geog/geog_postoffices/search/county%3ACR |archive-date=October 9, 2013 }}</ref>

On the night of November 9, 1888, Frontenac suffered the worst mining disaster in Kansas history,<ref>[http://www.frontenacks.net/history-of-frontenac.htm History of Frontenac] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20120319211918/http://www.frontenacks.net/history-of-frontenac.htm |date=2012-03-19 }} (City of Frontenac website)</ref> when a coal dust explosion<ref>"Mine Disaster Victims. Further particulars of the appalling accident." ''[[Lima, Ohio|Lima]] Daily Democratic Times'', November 12, 1888. Quoted in [https://www.gendisasters.com/kansas/5204/pittsburg,-ks-mining-disaster,-nov-1888 Pittsburg, KS Mining Disaster] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20211205192707/https://gendisasters.com/kansas/5204/pittsburg%2C-ks-mining-disaster%2C-nov-1888 |date=December 5, 2021 }} — GenDisasters.net.</ref> killed 44<ref>Nikki Patrick, [http://www.morningsun.net/news/x1720646416/Today-is-anniversary-of-mine-disaster "Today is anniversary of mine disaster."] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20130401041925/http://www.morningsun.net/news/x1720646416/Today-is-anniversary-of-mine-disaster |date=2013-04-01 }} ''[[Pittsburg, Kansas|Pittsburg]] Morning Sun'', November 9, 2008. At first it was estimated that more than 100 of the 164 miners in the shaft had been killed, but historians believe the final toll to be only 44.</ref> miners.

During the last decade of the nineteenth century and in the early twentieth century the town was populated primarily by immigrant families from eastern and southeastern Europe, predominantly [[Sicily#Demographics|Sicilian]], [[Italian people|Italian]], and [[Slavic people]] from the [[Austro-Hungarian Empire]]. Its maximum population neared 4,000. It housed various ethnic lodges and drinking parlors despite the state's increasingly severe ban on the distribution, sale, and manufacture of alcoholic beverages.{{citation needed|date=April 2012}}

Coal mining remained the town's occupational base until [[World War II]], when its economy began to change, as did the entire region's.