Houston, Kansas: The Post Office That Came Before the County Had Roads

01Where Houston Stood on the Plains

Houston lay in Graham Township, Graham County, at 39°33′45″N, 99°48′21″W, at an elevation of 2,274 feet. That puts it in the open, rolling country of the Kansas plains, far from any major river valley. Settlers here arrived to a landscape with few trees, limited timber and scattered creeks. Mail service was one of the first things a new community asked for, and one of the first things it could lose.

Houston is now classed as a ghost town. Wikipedia's "List of ghost towns in Kansas" includes it under Graham County, though the list gives no detail about the place.

02A Postmaster, a Creek, and a Sermon

Nearly everything specific about Houston comes from the 1912 Kansas: A Cyclopedia of State History, in its entry on Graham County. According to that entry, Houston was the county's second post office. It was established in 1875, and its postmaster was Oren Nevins.

The first post office in the county was called Graham. It stood on Bow Creek and opened in 1874 with H. W. Windom as postmaster. Houston followed a year later, so it was part of the county's earliest settlement.

The same entry records one more event. In 1876, the Rev. J. M. Brown preached the first sermon in the county, near the Houston post office. The Cyclopedia does not say whether the service was held in a home, a dugout or outdoors. It does show that the Houston neighborhood was a gathering point for early settlers, as post offices often were on the frontier.

Houston was one of many such offices. By 1881, the Cyclopedia says, Graham County had 22 post offices.

03What Happened to Houston?

The post office was discontinued in 1887, after about twelve years of service. No account of what happened to Houston survives.

The reason is unrecorded. The research turned up no account of a fire, a failed business or a railroad bypass. It also found no population figure, no list of businesses and no explanation of the name. In many Kansas counties, small post offices closed when mail routes were consolidated, when larger towns drew away families, or when settlers moved on. Whether any of that applied to Houston cannot be said from the sources found. Treating a guess as history would be a disservice to a place with so little documentation.

What the record does show is a settlement important enough to hold a post office, anchor a postmaster's name in the county's early history, and be the setting for a recorded first. After 1887, it drops out of the written record.

04What Remains of Houston Today

What remains on the ground is unknown. No source consulted describes foundations, a cemetery, a marker or any other surviving trace, and none says whether the site is on public or private land. Anyone hoping to find Houston would be working from the coordinates above, and the open farmland of Graham Township would reward patience more than expectation.

The best leads are in the archives. The Kansas Historical Society's post office records, Robert W. Baughman's Kansas Post Offices, 1828–1961, and Graham County newspapers from 1875 to 1887 may hold more. Until then, Houston survives as a name, a postmaster, a date range and a sermon on the plains.