By fall, severe drought caused many settlers to pack up and return to the East.Ībout 1859 or 1860, Barton left Olathe for good. One building, 12 feet by 14 feet, served as grocery, drug store, dry goods store, salon, and hotel. Public amenities did not exist, and streets were left to the imagination. The few homes and businesses were built of rough lumber and native stone. Of the 4,364 enumerated, 52 percent of the population were less than 19 years old 11 percent were foreign born, mostly from Germany or Ireland. Pat Cosgrove took the Johnson County Census in 1860. Olathe legally became the county seat in October of that year. The first Board of Trustees, headed by John T. The Mahaffie family was among the first to settle near Olathe. Olathe, a Shawnee word understood to mean "beautiful," was incorporated in 1857, and because of unstable political institutions, again in 1858. Preemption law provided for town sites that gave town companies the opportunity to gain power, money, political influence, and concessions such as post offices.īarton and his associates chose the geographic center of the county, crossed by Mill Creek and the Santa Fe Trail, to claim for their town. Barton, a physician assigned to the Shawnee tribal headquarters. In the early months of 1857, the survey of the Shawnee lands was followed closely by land speculators, among whom was Dr. The Kansas-Nebraska Act of 1854 created the Kansas Territory, opening the land to pre-emption by home seekers of European descent from the more heavily populated states. Thomas Johnson immigrated with the Shawnee tribe to the new reserve in 1829, and established a mission. Government treaties forced many woodland Native American tribes to move into what is now eastern Kansas. Overland trade with Mexico along the Santa Fe Trail brought enterprising merchants, the military and the first settlements to the western borders of the United States. Later, hunters and trappers ventured into the area, and after the Louisiana Purchase of 1803, the explorations of Lewis and Clark encouraged frontiersmen to move into the Trans-Mississippi West. In prehistoric times the Kansas, Pawnee and Osage Native American tribes roamed the land drained by the Kansas, Missouri and Osage Rivers.
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