Wilson: Czech Capital of the Kansas Plains

In eighteen seventy-four, a man named Francis Svehla is said to have driven a wagon into Ellsworth County, Kansas, with the words Czech Settlement painted on its side. He had found cheap land with good soil and limestone building stone, and he began advertising through Bohemian-language newspapers across the country. The response was remarkable.

Families arrived from the old country and from other parts of the country, settling the rolling land around what had been a cattle-trade stop on the Kansas Pacific Railway called Wilson Station. The town grew into a tight-knit Bohemian community with Czech churches, and Czech social halls. In nineteen sixty-seven, Kansas Governor Robert Docking officially declared Wilson the Czech Capital of Kansas.

The Czech Festival, held every July, draws visitors from across the state for kolache, polka, and a heritage that has been here for a hundred and fifty years.