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==History== ===Sand Creek massacre=== {{main|Sand Creek massacre}} On November 29, 1864, more than a decade before Colorado became a state and long before Kiowa County was formed, a massacre of [[Native Americans in the United States|Native Americans]]—a group of old men, women, and children—occurred on Sand Creek that initially was greeted as a victory in the [[Colorado War]] against hostile Indians; within months, Congressional inquiries revealed a different picture, and a national scandal erupted. It happened in what is now Kiowa County and is known as the [[Sand Creek Massacre]]. Territorial Governor [[John Evans (Colorado governor)|John Evans]] eventually lost his job for his part in setting up the incident, and Colonel [[John Chivington]], commander of the U.S. forces, was castigated by the [[United States Congress]], and the scandal followed him for the rest of his life. Evans would go on to make significant important contributions to the early Denver community, and while Chivington also made some, his reputation remained tainted, while Evans is still honored today. The location was not positively identified until 1999, and in 2005, the [[National Park Service]] established the [[Sand Creek Massacre National Historic Site]]. Currently, the facilities include a small visitor center, two walking trails, signage, and monuments overlooking the massacre site.<ref name="NPS Interpretive Pamphlet">{{cite book |title=Sand Creek Massacre Site Pamphlet |date=2017 |publisher=Government Printing Office |location=Washington, D.C.}}</ref> The massacre site itself is off-limits to visitors. ===Railroad and agriculture in the 1880s=== In the late 1880s, eastern Colorado attracted a lot of attention by farming interests that did not yet know that long-term [[agriculture]] was unsustainable in this arid landscape, and the [[railroad]]s were snaking west across the plains towards the gold fields of the [[Rocky Mountains]] during the [[Colorado Gold Rush]]. The [[Missouri Pacific Railroad]] crossed into what would soon become Kiowa County, Colorado, from Kansas in 1887. [[File:1898 kiowa county map.jpg|thumb|300px|left|Kiowa County, 1898]] Several small camps for railroad workers were established just over the border from [[Kansas]], and beginning after the town of [[Sheridan Lake, Colorado|Sheridan Lake]], new towns and camps were sequentially named, alphabetically, starting with "A" and proceeding westward along the railroad line. Arden, [[Brandon, Colorado|Brandon]], [[Chivington, Colorado|Chivington]], Diston, [[Eads, Colorado|Eads]], Fergus, Galatea, [[Haswell, Colorado|Haswell]], Inman, Joliet, and Kilburn appeared one after another, some developing into towns, others being only a pipe dream in the eyes of developers. Chivington was intended as a major watering stop for the railroad (a 60-room, $10,000 "crown jewel" hotel was initially built there), but the water was too alkaline to use and the trains instead stopped in Kansas to tank up. The hotel was soon torn down, its materials shipped to other Colorado locations to use in constructing other facilities—a common occurrence in late 19th century Colorado, as boom towns went bust. Kiowa County was established in 1889, taking its name from the Kiowa Indians who lived in eastern Colorado before the Europeans arrived. Sheridan Lake was the county seat of Kiowa County and was not at first a stop on the railroad line; only after local citizens built a railroad depot and turned it over to the Missouri Pacific did the railroad build a telegraph station and make Sheridan Lake a stop. The county seat moved to rival Eads in 1902. ===Kiowa County today=== Agriculture in eastern Colorado collapsed in the [[Dust Bowl]] days of the 1930s; today mostly dry-land farms and some ranching interests survive. Colorado's [[Colorado Front Range|Front Range]] cities and agriculture interests upstream have acquired most of the [[water rights]], and the [[groundwater]] [[aquifer]]s are drying up. Kiowa County faces ever-decreasing water supplies and further economic decline. It is conceivable that much of the county will eventually revert to its original sparse [[grassland]] and [[prairie]] conditions of the pre-1880s. Today Eads, along the old railroad line, is the largest town in the county. It is the Kiowa county seat, serves the surviving farming and ranching interests, and hosts the county's largest high school. Sheridan Lake does have a combined junior-and-senior high, and still surviving in some form are the towns of Towner, Arlington, Brandon, Chivington, and Haswell. Eads is also the location of the county's chief hospital, [[Weisbrod Memorial County Hospital]].<ref name=CHA>{{cite web |url= https://cha.com/colorado-hospitals/find-a-hospital/hospital/?id=324 |title= Weisbrod Memorial County Hospital |author=<!--Not stated--> |date=2024 |website=Colorado Hospital Association |publisher= |access-date=March 15, 2024 |quote=}}</ref>
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