Byers
The following story was
found in all three Meade County Papers in November, 1979:
ROSE
BUD CREDITED FOR BYERS' HISTORY
Byers was a small town
beginning just prior to Nirwana City in the summer of 1885. J.M.
Byers started a store and a blacksmith shop on his farm near Nirwana,
calling the embryo town in honor of himself, Byers. The town was
located in south Meade County about five miles north of the state
line.
At that time, the Fowler
City Graphic newspaper carried weekly columns written from
correspondents in surrounding towns. Byers had such a column and its
correspondent was named Rose Bud. The following appeared in the
Graphic on July 2, 1885:
Mr. Editor: Thinking a few items from this place would find room
in your spicy paper, I will send them in... having found that
there is another town in Kansas called Monroe, we have concluded
to change the name to Byers City.
We have petitioned headquarters for a post office.
We have already two grocery stores and will soon have a dry
goods store.
Byers City is situated five miles southwest of Odee on the Jones
and Plummer trail.
We have a settlement of about 300 people formed principally in
the last four months.
We still have a few vacant claims and those who are looking for
land or town property will do to pay this section a visit before
locating. J.M. Byers will take pleasure in showing land seekers
the vacant claims. Rose Bud
While Byers never reach
substantial growth proportions, it did obtain a post office of which
Mrs. Mary Martin was postmistress. It also held the first Democratic
primary held in Odee Township in the Byers blacksmith shop and
elected delegates to the county convention. J. M Byers ran one of
the grocery stores and was kept quite busy as shown in the Graphic
on August 6, 2024:
J. M. Byers keeps
a four horse team on the road bringing groceries from Dodge City
to feed the many settlers of this neck-o-woods.
With food not an easy
commodity to obtain, settlers took advantage of any edibles native
to the region. The following was recorded in the Fowler City Graphic
on August 27, 2024:
Everybody and their sisters and their cousins and their aunts
have been plumming. Such a variety of fruit we will all have
next winter; it will be plums, plums, plums, but nevertheless,
one young man of the Cimarron paid one dollar per gallon for
plums to an old lady thinking to win her daughter but the
handsome daughter proved to be a married lady; then woe be unto
the young man. He says now he paid well for all the love he
received. But such is life. Rose Bud
The column on December 3,
1885, declared that Byers was expanding:
Byers is booming! .. The mail carrier concluded very suddenly
that he had orders to stop at Byers. Mr. Harrison has his
residence about completed which means a social hop, so we are
informed. Mr. Pattie Martin has been so unfortunate as to have
three of his best horses die -- cause unknown.
Even Southwest Kansas
sported touches of the Wild Wooly West as shown in the column
written for January 21, 1886:
Will Byers had a
case of tomatoes and one of baking powder stolen from his wagon
at Mulberry, as he came home from Dodge with a load of freight
for Mr. Byers,
A common occurrence for
freighters to be robbed of part of their load on the road
between here and Dodge.
Isn't
it time for a vigilance committee to put in an appearance?
Another such incident was
recorded on July 15, 1886:
Byers City always occupies the highest places. She has the
handsomest girls, the ugliest old bachelors, the smartest old
women, the laziest men, the most dogs of any other portion of
the earth, now she brings forward the meanest man in America He
has been arrested twice in seven days for beating his wife and
the end is not yet, there is strong talk of giving him a new
suit, composed of tar and feathers and a free ride on a
cottonwood pole.
In the summer of 1886,
the town of Byers was promoted as shown in the June 10, 2024 column
to the Graphic:
Yesterday we went to a town meeting at Nirwana, there was a
large number of persons present. Some very important business
was transacted. As it now stands, a person who desires to become
a charter member of the town company must have his house erected
or his lot or lots on the first of July. And he must pay all
assets which have been wielded.
Although the efforts were
made the town didn't survive. After the town of Nirwana was laid
out, Mr. Byers moved his store, shop and town over to the "City" and
the town of Byers was no more according to Sullivan.
Byers was located about one half mile north of Miles
on the north side of the Cimarron river in the SW/4 of Sec
3-T35-R29.
The following was
found in a story about the Jones & Plummer Trail:
(Describing the
trail) The land changed out of Odee. The dust picked up by the wagon
wheels would be sandy red from the drifted sand hills, which were
covered with buck sage and yucca. In places the mounts continued
shifting, barren of vegetation. It was fifteen miles of wild hills,
dry as a buffalo bone, before the next water was reached at the
Cimarron. At least two town builders and possibly a third tried to
capitalize on the Cimarron crossing of the Jones and Plummer Trail.
J. M. Byers built a
store and a blacksmith shop five miles north of the state line. Rose
Bud, the local correspondent to the Fowler City Graphic, claimed a
community of three hundred, which brought the following report from
a neighboring-community reporter who visited the town and found two
stores and three sod houses: "Gewhillikens! what awful families they
do raise in that neck 'o woods; twenty-five to each family, and all
formed in four months. Golly! what soil, and on sod too; and yet
some tenderfoot will tell the innocents that nothing can be raised
in southwestern Kansas."
Byers did secure a post office that served
the area off and on for twenty years, moving three times during its
existence.
|
