Business Row in Freeport, Kansas, by Kathy Alexander.
Freeport, Kansas, is an unincorporated community and ghost town in Harper County. It is also officially an extinct town, as its post office is closed. As of the 2010 census, the community’s population was five.
Before officially being established as a city, Freeport was preceded by a settlement called Midlothian, about three miles southeast of the present site of Freeport. In 1878, B.H. Freeman operated a trading post there, opening a post office on April 23, 1879. The town also had a local school and church. Midlothian is the Scottish word for Midland.
St. Louis, Fort Scott & Wichita Railroad Company Stock Certificate.
The St. Louis, Fort Scott & Wichita Railway had built tracks to Anthony in 1885, and the town site of Freeport was platted on February 27, 1885. Eight days later, Midlothian was platted. The towns were side by side and divided by Grand Avenue, a north-south street. On September 16, 1885, B.H. Freeman moved his post office to the present site of Freeport.
The depot was built on Main Street of Freeport, and the towns eventually became hostile. However, the two towns came to good terms, and on March 18, 1886, the Freeport Tribune wrote that the differences had been settled. Midlothian became known as West Freeport.
Freeport was incorporated as a third-class city on October 12, 1887, and it became a boom town. At that time, there were 300 residents.
By 1892, the population peaked at 700. At that time, it boasted three lumberyards, two grain elevators, nine grocery stores, five dry goods stores, two meat markets, two hardware stores, three drug stores, four blacksmiths, two newspapers, one bank, and two hotels. At one time, the town even boasted a police force.
Early day Freeport, Kansas Buildings.
However, the town began to decline when the Cherokee Strip opened on September 16, 1893. By 1895, Freeport’s population was only 54.
In 1910, Freeport was located on the Missouri Pacific Railroad and had a score of business houses, a bank, an elevator, express and telegraph offices, a money order post office with one rural route, and a population of 161.
In the following decades, Freeport’s population gradually fell, and one by one, many businesses closed.
Presbyterian Church in Freeport, Kansas by Kathy Alexander.
In the 1940s, Freeport had a couple of grocery stores, a lumberyard, a barber, a hairdresser, a bank, and a creamery.
One of the last remaining businesses — the Freeport State Bank, which once gave the town its title as “the smallest incorporated city in the United States with a bank” — closed in December 2009, opening a branch in the county seat of Anthony.
Freeport’s post office closed on September 17, 2016.
The following year, on November 7, 2017, nearly 133 years after Freeport became a third-class city, the few remaining citizens voted to dissolve it. The question passed 4-0.
Grain Elevators in Freeport, Kansas, by Kathy Alexander.
The community has a total area of 0.20 square miles, all of it land and is surrounded by plains and farmland on all sides.
The community still has a grain elevator and a church. An old school and rusted playground equipment remain.
Freeport is 12 miles northeast of Anthony, the county seat.
©Kathy Alexander/Legends of Kansas, updated November 2024.
Also See:
Extinct Towns in Harper County, Kansas
Old school in Freeport, Kansas by Kathy Alexander.
Sources:
Blackmar, Frank W.; Kansas: A Cyclopedia of State History, Vol I; Standard Publishing Company, Chicago, IL 1912.
Fort Hays State University
Hutchinson News
Wikipedia