Lost Towns of Montgomery County

This article recounts the history of several early settlements in Montgomery County, Kansas, that were founded with high hopes but ultimately failed to thrive. These towns—Verdigris City, Montgomery City, Liberty (in its original location), Colfax, Samaria, Morgantown, and Radical City—played brief roles in the county’s early development, often as contenders for the county seat or commercial centers. Factors such as shifting transportation routes, court decisions, and consolidation of political support led to their decline and eventual abandonment. The sites they once occupied are now absorbed into the surrounding landscape, remembered only through historical accounts and place names.

By H. W. Young

Verdigris City

Among the historic towns of Montgomery County which no longer have an abiding place on the earth, nor a location on the map, the first to be mentioned must be Verdigris City, which was laid out by Captain Daniel McTaggart, and others, in May, 1869. Its location was about two and a half miles west and half a mile north of the present town of Liberty. The farm of Senator H. W. Conrad now occupies the site of this city that was to be, which was the first county seat of Montgomery County. It had, perhaps, a dozen houses and forty or fifty inhabitants in the heyday of its prosperity, but it was greater in expectations than in anything else.

Montgomery City

Montgomery City comes next in order. It was founded near the mouth of Drum Creek by R. W. Dunlap, who was an Indian trader there and the first postmaster commissioned in the county. It was in this neighborhood that the treaty for the cession of the Osage lands, which opened the county to white settlement, was ratified on the 10th of September, 1870. This embryo city also had county seat aspirations; but it early became evident to the founders of the towns east of the river that to divide their forces was to lose the fight. So the two cities which have been mentioned were abandoned while too young to shift for themselves, and the partisans of both united in locating “Old Liberty” on the hill about a quarter of a mile to the east of McTaggart’s dam and mill on the Verdigris, and just across the road to the east of the residence so long occupied by Senator McTaggart, and on whose porch he breathed his last.

Abandoned Sites

The contest for the location of the county seat was a short one, and when Independence won in the district court in May, 1870, Goodell Foster, who had been the wheel horse in the fight for Liberty, accepted the situation among the first and moved to Independence. A few months later he traded his corner lots in what was to have been the metropolis of Montgomery County, to a Liberty merchant, for four hats of medium quality. When the railroad was built down the east side of the county, Liberty was moved, houses, name and everything, to the railroad three miles to the southeast, where the present city of Liberty is located.

As mentioned elsewhere in this volume, when the founders of Independence reached that place they found the town of Colfax already laid out by George A. Brown, a mile and a half to the northwest. That site was at once abandoned in favor of Independence. The only other competitor Independence ever had on the west side of the river was the wholly mythical town of Samaria, which was supposed to be somewhere in the neighborhood of Walker Mound, and which received the honor of a vote at one of the elections as a candidate for county seat.

Morgantown

Then there was the city of Morgantown, located two and a half miles northeast of Independence, about where the school house now stands in district No. 36, which is known as the “Morgantown” school house. Here Morgan Brothers had a very extensive general store in which they had almost everything for sale that could be needed in a pioneer community, and there was a blacksmith shop and several houses. Charles Morgan, who has been so long since a prominent character at Independence, and who is now city marshal there, was one of the firm that gave name to this embryo city. Competition with Independence proved too strong for the young town, however, and its business was gradually absorbed by its rival across the Verdigris.

Radical City

As a connecting link between the dead and the living towns of the county, Radical City, six miles northwest of Independence and half a mile north of Elk River, must be mentioned. It was founded in 1869 by Colonel Samuel Young, but it never flourished, and at the best made but a rural hamlet. When the Missouri Pacific railroad was built in 1886, the station of Larimer was established a little more than a mile to the northeast, across Sycamore Creek, and the post office removed to that point. Since then Radical City has been fading away.