Achilles
It was in the vicinity of the future
town site of Achilles that the Battle of Sappa Creek was fought
in April of 1875. Two soldiers and twenty-seven Indians, including
eight women and children, were killed. In October 1878, Little
Wolf and his band of Cheyennes were passing through and attacked
the settlers who were living along Sappa Creek in revenge for
the earlier battle. This massacre killed forty settlers, and it
was the last Indian uprising in Kansas.
The Achilles Post Office was formed
in 1879 or 1880 by Armstead Morris, who named it for his father,
Achilles Morris, who was not a Kansas resident. The town site
was laid out by Mr. and Mrs. J. W. Rush in 1887. Many of the lots
were purchased by businessmen from Atwood, as it was rumored that
the railroad was going to come through Achilles. The railroad
never did lay tracks in this area, and although the town had a
population of about seventy-five in 1887, it didn't grow much
more. Shortly after a fire in 1911 which destroyed the Field and
Badgley Store, the town began to lose its population and eventually
became a ghost town.
The ethnicity of its settlers is unknown.
Sources
Hayden, Ruth Kelley. "The
Time That Was: The Courageous Acts and Accounts of Rawlins County,
Kansas, 1875-1915". H.F.Davis Memorial Library, Colby Community
College, Colby, KS, 1973.
"History of Rawlins County,
Kansas". Rawlins County Genealogical Society, 1988.
Fitzgerald, Daniel. "Ghost
Towns of Kansas". University Press of Kansas, 1988.
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