Editing Haskell County, Kansas (section)

==History==
{{See also|History of Kansas}}
For [[millennia]], the [[Great Plains]] of [[North America]] were inhabited by [[nomadic]] [[Native Americans in the United States|Native Americans]].

In 1854, the [[Kansas Territory]] was organized, then in 1861 [[Kansas]] became the 34th [[U.S. state]].

Haskell County was founded in 1887.<ref name=blackmar>{{cite book | url=https://archive.org/details/bub_gb_o8X5krq3fP8C/page/n822 | title=Kansas: A Cyclopedia of State History, Embracing Events, Institutions, Industries, Counties, Cities, Towns, Prominent Persons, Etc. | publisher=Standard Publishing Company | author=Blackmar, Frank Wilson | year=1912 | page=826}}</ref> It was named for [[Dudley C. Haskell]], a former member of Congress.<ref name=blackmar/>

===Origin of the Spanish flu pandemic===
Historian [[John M. Barry]] concluded that Haskell County was the location of the first outbreak of the [[1918 flu pandemic]] (nicknamed "Spanish flu"), which killed between 21 and 100 million people.<ref name="BarryNIH"/><ref>{{YouTube |id=7MHT5xTkL2g |time=4m55s |title=The 1918 Spanish Flu-A Conspiracy of Silence}}</ref> Loring Miner, a Haskell County doctor, warned the editors of ''Public Health Reports'' of the U.S. Public Health Service about the new and more deadly variant of the virus. It produced the common influenza symptoms with a new intensity: "violent headache and body aches, high fever, non-productive cough... This was violent, rapid in its progress through the body, and sometimes lethal. This influenza killed. Soon dozens of patients—the strongest, the healthiest, the most robust people in the county—were being struck down as suddenly as if they had been shot."  <ref>John M. Barry, ''[[The Great Influenza: The Story of the Deadliest Pandemic in History]]'' (New York: Penguin Books, c2004, 2005) p. 93.</ref> Barry writes that in the first six months of 1918, Miner's warning of "the influenza of a severe type" was the only reference in that journal to influenza anywhere in the world.<ref>, John M. Barry, ''The Great Influenza: The Story of the Deadliest Pandemic in History'' (New York: Penguin Books, c2004, 2005) pp. 94-95.</ref> 
<blockquote>Haskell County, Kansas, is the first recorded instance anywhere in the world of an outbreak of influenza so unusual that a physician warned public health officials. It remains the first recorded instance suggesting that a new virus was adapting, violently, to man. <br><br>
If the virus did not originate in Haskell, there is no good explanation for how it arrived there. There were no other known outbreaks anywhere in the United States from which someone could have carried the disease to Haskell and no suggestions of influenza outbreaks in either newspapers or reflected in vital statistics anywhere else in the region. And unlike the 1916 outbreak in France, one can trace with perfect definiteness the route of the virus from Haskell to the outside world.<ref name="BarryNIH">{{cite journal |last1=Barry |first1=John M |title=The site of origin of the 1918 influenza pandemic and its public health implications |journal=Journal of Translational Medicine |date=20 January 2004 |volume=2 |issue=1 |page=3 |doi=10.1186/1479-5876-2-3 |pmid=14733617 |issn=1479-5876 |pmc=340389 |doi-access=free }}</ref></blockquote>

Miner's report was not published until April 1918 and it failed to collect the attention it needed. It was not until after 2000 that historians' research revealed the origin of one of the deadliest epidemics in human history.

Historians have generally reported that the path of the disease from Haskell to the world occurred when newly inducted soldiers from the county traveled 200 miles from the county to [[Camp Funston]] (now [[Fort Riley]]) and were then deployed to Europe at the beginning of United States involvement in [[World War I]].<ref name="BarryNIH"/>

However, Haskell County's role in the pandemic is [[Spanish flu|widely disputed]]. Many pathologists believe that Haskell County did not play a role in the virus's origin and that historical accounts are entirely coincidental.{{Citation needed|date=October 2022}}

===Surviving the Dust Bowl===
The railroad and the development of oil and gas fields in the 1930s, and the locating of many deep wells for irrigation significantly improved the economy of the area helping overcome the "dust bowl" of that period.<ref name=pedia>[https://www.kshs.org/kansapedia/haskell-county-kansas/15296 Haskell County, Kansas], Kansapedia. Retrieved April 8, 2020.</ref> Haskell County was one of the hardest hit counties in the Midwest during the drought of 1930–1937.

The first rodeo and fair was held in Sublette in 1916 and the fair continues at the same location. The first school district was founded in Santa Fe in 1887. Amanda I. Watkins, who owned a considerable amount of land in the county, was named "World Wheat Queen" in 1926.<ref name=pedia/>