Hoisington: Built Around the Railroad They Wanted

Hoisington, in central Barton County, Kansas, was not an accident of settlement but an act of civic entrepreneurship. In eighteen eighty-six, a group of Barton County businessmen formed the Central Kansas Town Company, staked out a townsite, and named it for one of their partners, Andrew J. Hoisington of nearby Great Bend.

Their purpose was to attract the Kansas and Colorado Railroad to the area, reasoning that a platted town with lots for sale would pull the line through their land rather than somebody else's. It worked. The railroad arrived in the fall of eighteen eighty-six, the town incorporated in eighteen eighty-seven, and Hoisington grew into one of the larger towns in Barton County.

It remains an agricultural trade center today, surrounded by the wheat and sorghum fields of the Arkansas River lowlands.