Arkalon is a
ghost town
A ghost town, deserted city, extinct town, or abandoned city is an abandoned settlement, usually one that contains substantial visible remaining buildings and infrastructure such as roads. A town often becomes a ghost town because the economi ...
in
Seward County, Kansas
Seward County is a county of the U.S. state of Kansas. Its county seat and largest city is Liberal. As of the 2020 census, the county population was 21,964. The county was formed on March 20, 1873, and named after William Seward, a polit ...
, United States. It was located northeast of
Liberal on the west side of the
Cimarron River.
History
After the
Chicago, Kansas and Nebraska Railway
The Chicago, Kansas and Nebraska Railway (CK&N) was formed in 1885 and Marcus Low, a former attorney for the Chicago, Rock Island and Pacific Railroad, was its president. The CRI&P advanced the CK&N about twenty-five million dollars to begin cons ...
built through the area in 1888, a townsite
sprang up and
plat
In the United States, a plat ( or ) (plan) is a cadastral map, drawn to scale, showing the divisions of a piece of land. United States General Land Office surveyors drafted township plats of Public Lands Survey System, Public Lands Surveys to ...
ted in 1888. The town was named Arkalon for Arkalon Tenney, the father of the first
postmaster of the town, Hosea Eugene Tenney.
[Sampson of the Cimarron and Arkalon history; rits.org](_blank)
/ref> A post office called Arkalon was established in 1888 and remained in operation until 1929.
The ''Arkalon News'' newspaper was published from April 1888 until December 1892.
/ref> A large stockyard was erected for shipping cattle to market. While the nearby river held promise for the early settlers, they soon found that the bottom land next the Cimarron River was too sandy for farming and flooded too often. By the 1920s most of the early settlers had left, leaving only the railroad and stockyards behind.
References
Further reading
External links
;Historical photos
Custer Store between 1890 and 1910
Kansas Historical Society
Arkalon Schoolhouse between 1910 and 1930
;Historical railroad trestle - "Samson of the Cimarron"
rits.org
kansastravel.org
Mighty Samson Bridge nears 73rd birthday
leaderandtimes.com
{{Seward County, Kansas
Landforms of Seward County, Kansas
Ghost towns in Kansas