Monmouth is an
unincorporated community
An unincorporated area is a parcel of land that is not governed by a local general-purpose municipal corporation. (At p. 178.) They may be governed or serviced by an encompassing unit (such as a county) or another branch of the state (such as th ...
in
Crawford County, Kansas
Crawford County is a county located in Southeast Kansas. Its county seat is Girard, and its most populous city is Pittsburg. As of the 2020 census, the county population was 38,972. The county was named in honor of Samuel Crawford, the ...
, United States.
History
Monmouth was laid out in 1866. It may be the oldest town in Crawford County. Monmouth was named after
Monmouth, Illinois
Monmouth is a city in and the county seat of Warren County, Illinois, United States. The population was 8,902 at the 2020 census, down from 9,444 in 2010. It is the home of Monmouth College and contains Monmouth Park, Harmon Park, North Park, W ...
.
The first post office in Monmouth was established in July 1866.
Mounmouth experienced growth in 1879 when a
narrow-gauge railroad
A narrow-gauge railway (narrow-gauge railroad in the US) is a railway with a track gauge (distance between the rails) narrower than . Most narrow-gauge railways are between and .
Since narrow-gauge railways are usually built with tighter curv ...
, the
Memphis, Kansas & Colorado Railroad was first extended to that point.
In 1882 the rail line was converted to
standard gauge
A standard-gauge railway is a railway with a track gauge of . The standard gauge is also called Stephenson gauge (after George Stephenson), international gauge, UIC gauge, uniform gauge, normal gauge in Europe, and SGR in East Africa. It is the ...
, and in 1901 the railroad came under the control of the
St. Louis–San Francisco Railway
The St. Louis–San Francisco Railway , commonly known as the "Frisco", was a railroad that operated in the Midwest and South Central United States from 1876 to November 21, 1980. At the end of 1970, it operated of road on of track, not includ ...
which ran passenger and freight trains over the line during the earl half of the 20th century and maintained a depot at Monmouth. Passenger service ended in the late 1960s, and freight service continued into the 1980s, after
Burlington Northern Railroad
The Burlington Northern Railroad was a United States–based railroad company formed from a merger of four major U.S. railroads. Burlington Northern operated between 1970 and 1995.
Its historical lineage begins in the earliest days of railroad ...
purchased the Frisco in 1980. The rail line was eventually abandoned in the early 1990s. The town experienced a boom in the 1920s, finding itself in the epicenter of extensive coal mining activity in Southeast Kansas. Today the town has less than ten residences. Its only remaining nonresidential structure is Monmouth Trinity Holiness Church.
References
Further reading
External links
* Crawford County maps
CurrentHistoric
KDOT
Unincorporated communities in Crawford County, Kansas
Unincorporated communities in Kansas
{{CrawfordCountyKS-geo-stub