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Homesteading in Greeley County

Colokan

In 1886 Civil War veterans from Illinois came and settled in Greeley County, and founded a soldiers' colony close to the Kansas-Colorado border. In 1887 the soldiers' colony merged with the Presbyterian colony, and formed the Colokan Town Company. The town name Colokan was a combination of COLOrado and KANsas, since the town was only a half mile from the Colorado state line.

The Denver, Memphis, & Atlantic Railroad went through Colokan and a Colorado town called Towner. Colokan eventually lost the railroad depot in 1889 to Towner, and thus Colokan began to decline. By 1897 the town of Colokan had been completely vacated, and little remains today of what once was called "The Star of Western Kansas."

The ethnicity of its settlers is unknown.

Sources

Fitzgerald, Daniel. Ghost Towns of Kansas: A Traveler's Guide. Lawrence: The University Press of Kansas, 1988.

Sorensen, Conner. Ghost Towns of Greeley County Kansas. Tribune: Greeley County Republican, 1967.