Edson | Eustis
| Gandy | Goodland
| Itasca | Kanorado
| Ruleton | Sherman
Center | Voltaire
Homesteading in Sherman County
Eustis
P. S. Eustis and O. R. Phillips organized
the Lincoln Land Company which laid out a town in the spring of
1885. Mr. Eustis was an agent of the Burlington & Missouri
River Railroad, and the new town was named after him. A post office
was established in July 1886.
When Sherman County was organized on
September 20, 1886, Eustis was named the temporary county seat.
On November 8, 1886, the voters of Sherman County had an election
to decide which town would be the temporary county seat with the
choice between Sherman Center and Eustis. Eustis won and began
constructing a courthouse. Another election was held in the spring
of 1887 and Eustis won again.
A county committee met in Eustis on
August 23, 1887 for the purpose of setting up an election for
a permanent county seat. Voltaire, Sherman Center, and an individual
named B. Taylor, who owned land near the center of the county,
presented their proposals in front of the committee. Eustis did
not so so because the citizens said that when the courthouse was
finished, it would be turned over to the county unofficially.
But in the next meeting, a new town company from the Goodland
town site presented their proposal, and it met with the approval
of the town committee. An election was held in the fall of 1887
and the citizens could vote for Goodland, Eustis, Voltaire or
B. Taylor. Goodland became the permanent county seat, but the
citizens of Eustis were not about to give up their temporary county
seat. They had the county records and the court still recognized
the town as the county seat. Eventually the officials in Goodland
hired a group of armed cowboys who captured a county commissioner
and forced him to let them remove the record books, all without
a shot being fired.
In a short few weeks after this confrontation,
the citizens of Eustis moved the town to Goodland, and Eustis
ceased in later years.
The ethnicity of its settlers is not
known.
Sources
Fitzgerald, Daniel. "Faded
Dreams: More Ghost Towns of Kansas". University Press of
Kansas, 1994.
