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.