Pawnee County History
"A New Centennial History of Kansas," Charles Tuttle, 1876
Pawnee County was organized in 1872, and named for the
nation upon whose hunting grounds Kansas is being built up.
The area is 756 square miles. The population in 1875 was 1,005,
in which total males preponderate by 86. Farming employs 67
per cent, of the settlers, 8 are engaged in trade and transportation and 10 per cent, in mines and manufactures. Larned is the
county seat, 197 miles southwest from Topeka, on the Arkansas
river and on the Atchison, Topeka and Santa Fe Railroad, which
has here an excellent station. This is the station for Fort Larned.
There is a weekly paper published here, the Larned Press. One-fourth of the area is bottom land, but there is very little timber.
The Arkansas river and its tributary, the Pawnee Fork, are the
streams. Springs are numerous and wells vary from 6 to 24 feet.
No coal has been found, but good sandstone is abundant, and
fire and pottery clay have been discovered. The Atchison, Topeka and Santa Fe Railroad has a station at Garfield, as well as
at Larned. Manufactures are in their infancy, but there are good
water powers available on Pawnee Fork. There are no banks,
and only one school house, valued at $650, but there 11 organized districts. Pawnee suffered from the locusts to the extent of
having one-fourth of its population reduced to destitution in
1874-5.
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