Small, Kansas

[W. Gray]

Where was Small, Kansas?

By my computation it was 24.63 miles from Howard.

It was on K-99 and was serviced by the Howard Branch of the Atchison, Topeka, and Santa Fe RR.

There was always activity there, at least in the summer.

A note: The place was named by the Santa Fe.

[flintauqua]

I can still smell that sweet fragrance that came out of the mill there.  Now all you would smell would be four sewer lagoons.  Not too many places sit at a junction of 'old' K-11 and new K-99.

[W. Gray]

Flintauqua, in the process of answering, you triggered my memory concerning K-99.

Today's former location of Small is west of the 130th Street and K-99 intersection, southeast of Eureka.

Small consisted only of the alfalfa mill and had no population.

Below is a 1954 Greenwood County map.


In the upper left of the map is the south part of Eureka.

In the middle of the map, going north to south is K-99.

In Congressional Township section 7 of the 1954 map, the Howard Branch coming from Climax crosses K-99 and there is a large black image representing a large building that I believe was intended by the cartographer to be the Small, Kansas, mill. Although it seems in my memory to be a tad further west and on the south side of the tracks.

A man named W. J. Small owned the alfalfa mill. Santa Fe provided a service track and spur and had to give the mill a name for operating purposes so they choose Small. W. J. Small seems to have owned the alfalfa mill in Howard, also.

As I was trying to formulate the question concerning Small, Ks, I kept asking myself why we (the family) in the early fifties always drove south of the mill to and from Howard. The answer was that sometime before the 1951-1954 timeframe, K-99 coming from Severy turned northwest at what is now 130th Street going to Jefferson Street in Eureka and then converged with US-54 on the east side of town before heading east toward Iola. Around 1951-1954, the state moved the K-99 and US 154 intersection two miles east of Eureka where it is today.

In recent years, when I would take my mother to Eureka, she would always remind me to take the old highway into town.

A fellow by the name of James Burke, who was living in Climax at the time, says he took this photo from atop the last car on the Small spur looking east. The engine is crossing K-99 coming from Climax and heading towards Eureka.



This is reported by one web site to be the remnants of Small. I am not certain of that. The sewer lagoons are barely out of the picture in the northwest at the end of that road.