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The map links I have been posting are to the University of Texas (at Austin) Library, which has an extensive historic map collection, and has gone to great lengths and expense to put them up on the web for all to view.  Many other libraries, historic preservation societies, and government agencies have extensive map collections but lack the financial and cyber resources to get them scanned, stored on a server and published into the online public domain.

Sadly, Elk County's surveyors maps and notes went up in flames in 1906.  This is true of many other counties also.  At least some of Chautauqua County's still exist, as they were made available to Pat and Jack Fletcher who have done extensive research and published at least three books on the Cherokee Trail.  Also known as Evan's Trail, it crossed what is now Elk and Chautauqua County (as well as Montgomery and Butler) on its route from Tahlequah, OK to a junction with the Santa Fe Trail just east of present-day McPherson, KS.

This trail has been nearly lost to history, yet was the route thousands took from NW Arkansas and the Cherokee Nation to reach the more established Santa Fe Trail and then proceed to multiple points west of the Rockies from 1848 till the end of the Civil War.

Neither the Spearville 1889 or Dodge 1890 topos show any Indian Treaty line.  Of course these two maps join each other directly on the 100th meridian.

http://www.lib.utexas.edu/maps/topo/kansas/txu-pclmaps-topo-ks-spearville-1889.jpg

http://www.lib.utexas.edu/maps/topo/kansas/txu-pclmaps-topo-ks-dodge-1890.jpg

"Pirate ships and crews from the North African states of Tripoli, Tunis, and Algiers (the Barbary Coast), . . . were the scourge of the Mediterranean. Capturing merchant ships and enslaving or ransoming their crews provided the Muslim rulers of these nations with wealth and naval power."

Sound slightly familiar?  That's the opening on the Wikipedia entry on the First Barbary War fought between the fledgling United States of America and the North African Muslim states from 1801-1805.

This is where the Marine Corps Theme gets the line "to the shores of Tripoli"

Back to Ham Fork - in 1883 it is on the Elk county map from William G. Cutler's History of the State of Kansas:

http://www.kancoll.org/graphics/maps/elk.htm

It's Ham Fork on the 1885 USGS Topo, but in the 1887 State Atlas Ham Fork dissapears and is renamed Elk River.

Three questions:

1.  Marcia, what does your 1885 Elk County Atlas show?

2.  Why the change?

3.  Does the name Ham Fork or Ham Creek still apply to a tributary somewhere above Clear Creek?

1887 map of Elk County:

http://www.historicmapworks.com/Map/US/56647/Elk+County/Kansas+State+Atlas+1887/Kansas/

Note Elk River (the stream, not the locale) is labled as such above its confluence with todays Rowe Branch.  

Union Centre P.O. and School No. 2 in W 1/2 of SW 1/4 Sec 32.

Western Park in N 1/2 of NE 1/4 Sec 22.

Of course this map also really messed up how the main stem (labled S. Fork) and north branch of the Wildcat join up north and east of Moline.  On modern topos, South Fork is the name applied to the branch that joins the main Wildcat below the Martin Marietta and Durbin Quarries, after flowing through Corky Durbin's watershed lake.

On most all maps I've seen, Western Park was located in the NE 1/4 of section 22 - T29S - R9E, or one of the quarter sections adjoining that quarter section, which is where it is in the 1903 Standard Atlas of Elk County:

http://www.kansasmemory.org/item/209401/page/3

Union Center, though not on the 1903 map, to me has always been located where the school of that name was, the SW 1/4 of the SW 1/4 of section 32 - T29S - R10E, near where Lynn Perkins lives.

Also, Elk River is not actually named Elk River until below Paw Paw (actually at confluence with Mound Branch) at that period in time: 

http://www.lib.utexas.edu/maps/topo/kansas/txu-pclmaps-topo-ks-sedan-1885.jpg

Ham Fork was the historic name for the main stem of Elk River above it's confluence with Clear Creek.  Don't know when or why the name changed.  Here is an 1885 topo:

http://www.lib.utexas.edu/maps/topo/kansas/txu-pclmaps-topo-ks-eureka-1885.jpg