In 1885, a party of settlers from Dade County, Missouri, shipped their belongings by train to Kingman, Kansas, where the tracks ended, and the pioneers were obliged to continue their journey west by wagons. They struck out across the flat, rolling lands, 22 miles south of Garden City. There they joined the Nafziger family, who had conceived the idea of building a town south of the Arkansas River. The town was called Ivanhoe, meaning “a strong place or home” in the root language of Russia.
The Ivanhoe town company was organized by a small group of businessmen from garden city. A site map was laid out and platted in June of 1885. On July 4th, the first rooming house was open for business, at a race of $1.40 per day, for a room, meals and livery service. The next order of business was the digging of a water well, followed by the construction of a post office and general store, whose back room also functioned as the public school during the annual three-month school term.
Ivanhoe grew at the boomtown rate. Numerous freight wagons pulled by oxen were arriving daily, filled with lumber, nails, coal, and canvas, to be used for creating what was being called “the garden spot of the Plains.” In 1886, while digging a second well, a stone quarry was discovered. Later, a brickyard was constructed, and produced some of the finest bricks on the market at that time.
By spring planting in 1887, the Ivanhoe Times newspaper listed ads for hotels, livery stables, real estate firms, a blacksmith, a bakery, a butcher shop, four grocery stores, two restaurants, two dry goods stores, a shoemaker, and a barber. There were stores that sold hardware, jewelry, stationery, ladies’ hats, as well as a drugstore, and a billiard and pool hall. Talk of railroads dominated conversations. A narrow-gauge line from Garden City, on the Arkansas River, south to Fargo, on the Cimarron River, a distance of 50 miles, has now been charted. A surveying party from the Sante Fe Railroad system is at camp, awaiting orders. The Dodge City, Montezuma and Trinidad Railroad is progressing rapidly
In 1887, winter was mild with no heavy snows. Spring was mild, and the clouds came, but the rain and the railroad did not. Days became hot, and the winds blew, and dust devils danced across the land. The earth was parched in brown; there would be no harvest this year. The exodus started: wagons were loaded with what they could take, and the boom turned to a bust. In the August 1887 census, 7,160 people reside in Ivanhoe. By 1900, the town was gone.
If you happen to drive south of Garden City on Highway 83 some evening, you’ll pass by the Ivanhoe Cemetery; pause for a moment, and look to the west. Is that the glow of a candle flame, or the spark of a vision? What was that sound? Could it be the moan of a dying dream, or was it the wind, whispering quiet memories of pain and failure?
Thanks to the Haskell County Historical Museum in Sublette, Kansas, for providing material used in the writing of this story. For High Plains Public Radio, I’m Barb Wood.
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High Plains History is a production of High Plains Public Radio. Special thanks to Lynn Boitano for additional production assistance.
