Abilene, Kansas is the seat of Dickinson County, in central Kansas. It sits 1,150 feet above sea level on the Smoky Hill River, 85 miles west of Topeka. It was settled in 1859, and incorporated in 1869.
Timothy F. Hersey, a migrant from Illinois, was the first settler to claim land near the site of the future Abilene. In July of 1857, he staked a claim on the bare west bank of Mud Creek just north of the Smoky Hill. Three years later Charles H. Thompson was seen coming down the river-hugging wagon track that was called a military road. Thompson, like Hersey before him, also staked out a quarter-section of land on the creekbank, opposite from the land of neighbor Hersey.
Thompson's property, an edge of prairie that sloped southward toward the timbered Smoky Hill bottom, gave him the idea that here would be a good place to start a town. So in the spring of 1861, he had a surveyor stake out a town on a portion of his land, complete with ruled off blocks and streets. Then on June 7 he filed a plat with the county register of deeds for Dickinson County and began selling lots. Six months later, Thompson could brag that his town, called Abilene, already had a store, a blacksmith, a hotel, post office, and several families in residence.
For a while there was considerable to-do about which frontier town would win the prize as county seat for Dickinson County. At first the town of Newport claimed the distinction, then in the winter of 1861-62, promoters of several rival towns called for relocating the county seat. The contenders for the new site were Abilene, Smoky Hill and Uniontown, the latter figuring they would win. But somehow Charley Thompson convinced voters on the north side of Chapman Creek to throw their vote that would have gone to Smoky Hill to Abilene. On August 5 Abilene drew in sixty-five votes, leaving the remaining thirty-six votes split unevenly between the other two towns.
If Thompson had counted on Abilene booming after becoming the county seat, he was disappointed. For sometime afterwards the town remained a wide spot, or not so wide, in the road, dotted here and there with crude shelters. But times were to turn around for the better, or worse by some opinions, when a man called Joe McCoy stepped off the train at Abilene and took a look around.
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