Pratt: Named for the Fallen, Built on the Plains

Pratt, Kansas, founded in eighteen eighty-four, is named for Caleb S. Pratt, a young officer from the Second Kansas Infantry who died in the Battle of Wilson's Creek in eighteen sixty-one, near Springfield, Missouri. The site was once Kiowa hunting ground before settlement pushed south across the Arkansas River corridor.

A brutal blizzard struck within a few years of the town's founding, killing an estimated eighty percent of local cattle herds and many settlers caught outside. Pratt recovered, and the Chicago, Kansas and Nebraska Railway laid its main line through town in eighteen eighty-seven, sealing it as a trade center. Pratt became the county seat the following year, in eighteen eighty-eight, after earlier contests between Saratoga and Iuka.

Today it is known as a pleasant central-Kansas small city and is home to the Kansas Department of Wildlife and Parks.