Editing Stockton, Kansas (section)

===19th century===
Stockton was founded in 1872.<ref>{{cite web | url=http://www.hwy24.org/uploads/2/6/1/8/26189167/28_town_names.pdf | title=Origin of Town Names | publisher=Solomon Valley Highway 24 Heritage Alliance | access-date=9 April 2018 | pages=3}}</ref>  A large share of the first settlers were cattle dealers, or stockmen, and they named their new home Stocktown, or as it soon became known, Stockton.<ref>{{cite book | url=https://archive.org/details/bub_gb_5zdAAQAAMAAJ | title=Biennial Report of the Board of Directors of the Kansas State Historical Society | publisher=Kansas State Printing Plant | author=Kansas State Historical Society | year=1916 | pages=[https://archive.org/details/bub_gb_5zdAAQAAMAAJ/page/n384 277]}}</ref> Stockton was incorporated as a city in 1879.<ref name="Cyclopedia">{{cite book | url=https://archive.org/details/bub_gb_Qi9cXyTWt9EC | title=Kansas: A Cyclopedia of State History, Volume 2 | publisher=Standard Publishing Company | author=Blackmar, Frank Wilson | year=1912 | pages=[https://archive.org/details/bub_gb_Qi9cXyTWt9EC/page/n749 767]}}</ref>

Stockton is located on the natural trail up the valley of the South Solomon River and where the military supply trail from [[Fort Kearney]], Nebraska, to [[Fort Hays]], Kansas, crossed the South Solomon River.  Stockton survived and grew during the thirteen years from founding until the arrival of the railroad in 1885.{{citation needed|date=March 2011}}

Stockton was once a [[sundown town]], where African Americans living in [[Nicodemus, Kansas|Nicodemus]] were not welcome after dark.<ref>{{cite interview|first=Angela|last=Bates|interviewer=[[Frank Stasio]]|title=Black History Month: Postcard from Kansas|work=[[Talk of the Nation]]|publisher=NPR|location=Washington, D.C.|date=February 17, 2005|url=https://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=4503065|quote=So the only remaining dugout in the area that was used by the people that traveled from Stockton—traveled to Stockton from Nicodemus to do their trading and all, had to stay in that dugout, and it's still there, and it's because they had a sundown law.}}</ref>