|
History of Cottonwood Falls, Kansas
The first settlement in the area of Cottonwood Falls was in 1854, when an Indian trader named Seth Hayes founded a cattle ranch on the Cottonwood River close to the mouth of Diamond Spring Creek. The area around the town was organized as Chase County in 1859 with Cottonwood Falls becoming the county seat. In 1873 the county's French Renaissance style court house was built. Through the late 19th and early 20th centuries the area around the city was mainly divided into farms and cattle ranches.
In the early days, Cottonwood Falls was actually two towns. Cottonwood Falls and North Cottonwood Falls were separated by only the width of a street, appropriately named Union. Addresses in Cottonwood Falls are a bit confusing as a result. Addresses north of Union start at Mill Street and get larger as one goes south. At Union street, numbering starts again and gets larger as one goes south to Eighth Street.
Many communities in Chase County were established in the Cottonwood Valley close to the Cottonwood River. Floods have taken their toll on most of those communities through the years, but Cottonwood Falls was built on the high side of the river and has escaped the problem of floods for the most part.
Before the advent of better transportation and highways and a decline in population, Cottonwood Falls had a downtown full of businesses and services. Like many other small towns in rural areas, those businesses and services started disappearing as the population started declining and those people remaining started heading for larger communities for jobs, shopping and services. The advent of discount stores starting in the late 50s and 60s helped speed up the decline of the businesses.
If you would like to contribute content
for this page or make suggestions,
please contact Jim Zeiner by email. |
