Russell, Kansas: Hometown of Bob Dole

Russell was founded in eighteen seventy-one by colonists from Ripon, Wisconsin, who settled at a spot on the Kansas Pacific Railroad called Fossil Station. The county had been established in eighteen sixty-seven and was named for Avra Russell. Russell spent its early years in a county-seat dispute before winning out in eighteen seventy-four.

It later became an oil town when the Central Kansas oil field came in during the nineteen twenties. The town's most famous son arrived later: Bob Dole was born here on July twenty-second, nineteen twenty-three, became a senator for twenty-seven years, and ran for president in nineteen ninety-six. Russell remembers him as a defining product of the plains.