Silkville: Kansas's French Silk Utopia

In eighteen sixty-nine, a Frenchman named Ernest de Boissiere purchased about three thousand acres in Franklin County and founded Silkville, a cooperative silk-farming colony. De Boissiere imported silkworms, planted thousands of mulberry trees, and built a mansion, winery, and communal dormitories. At its peak in the eighteen seventies, Silkville produced some of the finest raw silk in North America and won prizes at international exhibitions.

But the colony struggled to attract committed workers, and de Boissiere could not sustain the utopian labor model. After he returned to France in eighteen ninety-two, the property went to the Odd Fellows. The silk operation wound down, the colony dissolved, and by nineteen hundred virtually nothing remained.

Silkville is today a ghost town, remembered as one of the most unlikely agricultural experiments on the Kansas prairie.