Editing Kanopolis, Kansas (section)

==History==

===Early 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]].  From the 16th to 18th centuries, the [[Kingdom of France]] claimed ownership of large parts of [[North America]].  In 1762, after the [[French and Indian War]], France secretly ceded [[New France]] to [[Spain]], by the [[Treaty of Fontainebleau (1762)|Treaty of Fontainebleau]].  In 1802, Spain returned most of the land to France, keeping title to about 7,500 square miles. In 1803, most of the land for [[History of Kansas|modern day Kansas]] was acquired by the United States from France as part of the 828,000 square mile [[Louisiana Purchase]].  In 1854, the [[Kansas Territory]] was organized under the provisions of the [[Kansas–Nebraska Act]], then in 1861 [[Kansas]] became the 34th [[U.S. state]]. In 1867, [[Ellsworth County, Kansas|Ellsworth County]] was established, which included the land for Kanopolis.

===Pre-Kanopolis===
Fort Ellsworth was the first frontier fort established in the Kanopolis area.<ref name="auto">Vaughn, Carlene. "Fort Ellsworth/Fort Harker Timeline." Kansas State Historical Society. June 27, 1997. Accessed April 28, 2015. https://www.kshs.org/kansapedia/fort-ellsworth-fort-harker-timeline/11178.</ref> It was built by the United States Army in August 1864 at the junction of the Fort Riley-Fort Larned Road and the Smoky Hill Trail, near the [[Smoky Hill River]].<ref name = "natreg">National Register of Historic Places, Fort Harker Officers' Quarters, Kanopolis, Ellsworth County, Kansas</ref> Its purpose was to protect construction of the [[Kansas Pacific Railway|Union Pacific railroad]] from Native American raids.<ref name = "natreg"/> In November, 1866 Fort Ellsworth changed its name to [[Fort Harker (Kansas)|Fort Harker]] after the death of General G.H. Charles Harker, who was killed in battle in 1864.<ref name = "natreg"/>

By this time, the fort had grown in importance as a military staging post and supply depot for forts further west, and needed to expand to continue meeting its mission. As a result, on November 17, 1866, the Army ordered the construction of a new fort approximately three-quarters mile east of the current location.<ref name = "natreg"/> The original Fort Ellsworth was closed in early 1867, and the community of [[Ellsworth, Kansas|Ellsworth]] was founded in its place.<ref name = "natreg"/>

In January 1867, [[Fort Harker (Kansas)|Fort Harker]] was relocated approximately three-quarters mile east of the old location to an open prairie about one mile north of the [[Smoky Hill River]].<ref name = "natreg"/> This new location featured a "large, well-equipped" hospital," which housed those were ill.<ref name = "natreg"/> The hospital was surely busy, as about 200 people died in 1867 from cholera in and around the Fort Harker area.<ref name = "natreg"/> For the next five years, Fort Harker became one of the most important military stations west of the Missouri River.[cite the Guardhouse national register nomination] It used 700 soldiers and twice as many civilian employees, as well as 400 horses and mules. Additionally, the mail to all military posts down the Arkansas river, as well as many posts in Colorado and New Mexico, was supplied from Fort Harker.<ref name = "natreg"/>

Over the coming years, the threat of Native American raids in the region diminished as territory was secured and railroad construction moved west. No longer of geographic significance, Fort Harker was abandoned on April 2, 1872<ref name="auto"/> and the war department ordered it to be closed shortly thereafter.<ref>{{Cite news |url=https://www.newspapers.com/clip/47739782/kansas-news-items/ |title=Kansas News Items |newspaper=Walnut Valley Times |page=2 |date=June 14, 1872 |access-date=April 28, 2015 |via=Newspapers.com}}</ref> Its garrison was relocated west to [[Fort Hays]].<ref name="newspapers.com">{{Cite news |url=https://www.newspapers.com/clip/2282256/the-salina-journal/ |last=Gaston |first=Pat |title=Kanopolis-Fort Harker Area Wanted to Be Capitol Site |newspaper=The Salina Journal |page=18 |date=September 14, 1975 |access-date=April 28, 2015 |via=Newspapers.com}}</ref> In the winter of 1872-1873, Fort Harker briefly stationed troops once more<ref name="auto"/><ref name="auto1">National Register of Historic Places, Fort Harker Guardhouse, Kanopolis, Ellsworth County, Kansas.</ref> before being deserted one final time. In the following years, Fort Harker became the "Fort Harker Military Reservation".

===Kanopolis begins===
In June 1880, the Senate passed bill S.194, an act disposing Fort Harker Military Reservation of public ownership and giving the 10,240 acre tract of land to the Interior Department for sale.<ref name="auto"/><ref name="newspapers.com"/> A Dr. Hodge acquired the land and sold it to Col. Henry Johnson for $4,177.50 in August, 1881.<ref name="auto1"/> In summer of 1885, a seventeen-member group of capitalists based in Ohio led by Ross Mitchell (president), F.M. Bookwalter (vice president), and John H. Thomas (treasurer) purchased 4,740 acres of the land, including Fort Harker and its buildings, for $71,000 from Col. Johnson.<ref name="auto"/><ref name="auto1"/><ref name="auto2">{{Cite news |url=https://www.newspapers.com/clip/47740025/kanopolis/ |last=Crowell |first=J.S. |title=Kanopolis |newspaper=Frankfort Roundabout |date=July 9, 1887 |access-date=April 28, 2015 |via=Newspapers.com}}</ref> Imagining their newly acquired land would soon become a "Central Metropolis," and a future capitol because of its location,<ref name="newspapers.com"/> the group became chartered as the Kanopolis Land Company on March 15, 1886, with a capital stock of $500,000.<ref>{{Cite news |url=https://www.newspapers.com/clip/47740217/statehouse/ |title=Statehouse |newspaper=[[The Topeka Daily Capital]] |date=March 16, 1886 |access-date=April 28, 2015 |page=4 |via=Newspapers.com}}</ref> They laid out land for 150,000 people,<ref name="newspapers.com"/> and shortly after, the town of Kanopolis was founded.<ref name="auto"/>

===Optimism and boosterism===
[[File:Kanopolis - center of Kansas and USA.jpg|thumb|alt= a map displaying Kanopolis in the middle. | A Kanopolis advertisement in ''The Lawrence Journal'', May 1886]]

The Kanopolis Land Co., with editor R.V. Morgan, advertised in other newspapers and in a paper of their own called The Kanopolis Journal to attract buyers to Kanopolis.<ref name="auto3">{{Cite news |url=https://www.newspapers.com/clip/47740590/the-tragedy-of-a-town/ |title=Tragedy of a Town |newspaper=The Salina Journal |page=6 |date=February 26, 1906 |access-date=April 28, 2015 |via=Newspapers.com}}</ref> These advertisements serve as examples of the boosterism characteristic of the frontier west. One from May 1886 proclaimed Kanopolis "is destined to be the railroad, commercial, and manufacturing capital of Kansas"<ref>{{Cite news |url=https://www.newspapers.com/clip/2390742/kanopolis-advertisement-from-the/ |title=Kanopolis, the Future Great City of Kansas |newspaper=[[Lawrence Daily Journal]] |page=3 |date=May 13, 1886 |access-date=April 28, 2015 |via=Newspapers.com}}</ref> and said buying land in Kanopolis is the "Best investment in the world." Another in July 1887 declared it to be the only town in the state with railroads running north, south, east, and west and also claimed to have seven factories, thirteen stores, and a hotel. It reported the population to be 600 when the town was "scarcely" one year old.<ref name="auto2"/>

More hyperbolic than the advertisements in other newspapers was ''The Kanopolis Journal''. It boasted Kanopolis to have "woolen mills, iron factories, carriage works, flour mills, wholesale houses, banks, a drug store, and an opera house, doctors, and machine shops," as well as a brewery.<ref name="auto3"/> Additionally, the journal predicts Kanopolis would soon be the furniture hub of the midwest, saying it "is not one-half the distance from a limitless supply of walnut, oak, ash, poplar and all lumber needed in the manufacture of furniture as is Grand Rapids, Michigan, which owes its prosperity to the furniture business."<ref name="auto3"/> It said that in forty years it will have 500,000 inhabitants, as it had already "grown as populous as Cincinnati did in eleven years or Cleveland did in thirty years."<ref name="auto3"/> 
The journal also describes giant potatoes, cabbage leaves that "are used for circus tents," jack rabbits that "grow as large as horses," and pea pods that "are used as ferry boats on the Arkansas river."<ref name="auto3"/> It also claims "A man planted a turnip one mile from the railroad last summer and the company sued him for obstructing the track before the middle of July." Additionally, the journal says that "North of Kanopolis are several lakes of strained honey, and we also often have showers of rosewater and cologne in the early spring."<ref name="auto3"/> The journal even says the area around Kanopolis is the real garden of Eden, and that there is a fig tree that Eve herself used to make her first clothes, and that the tree is "like our flag - it is still there, and furnishes evidence which our oldest inhabitants dare not dispute.... This settlement of Western Kansas is restoring Eden to its primitive glory and men to their first estate."<ref name="auto3"/>

===Shy of expectations===
Kanopolis, for a variety of reasons, never became the "Queen City of the Midwest" that its backers "ballyhooed" it would become.<ref name="newspapers.com"/> Perhaps its biggest injury was when it lost a referendum by 75 votes to become the seat of Ellsworth County.<ref name="newspapers.com"/> Also, it had some contemporary antagonists. An editorial in a January 1887 paper from the Leavenworth Times calls Kanopolis a "buffalo wallow," a "scheme," and a "fraud" from an "eastern syndicate".<ref>{{Cite news |url=https://www.newspapers.com/clip/47740924/kanopolis-outdone/ |title=Kanopolis Outdone |newspaper=[[Leavenworth Times]] |page=4 |date=January 30, 1887 |access-date=April 28, 2015 |via=Newspapers.com}}</ref> A lawsuit between the Kanopolis Land Co. and R.V. Morgan in 1895 ensued, likely detracting from the company's ability to advertise and sell land.<ref>{{Cite news |url=https://www.newspapers.com/clip/47740429/appellate-court/ |title=Appellate Court |newspaper=[[The Topeka Daily Capital]] |page=6 |date=July 7, 1895 |access-date=April 28, 2015 |via=Newspapers.com}}</ref> By 1906, Kanopolis' population had fallen to 264.<ref name="auto3"/>