Cassoday, Kansas Main Street by Kathy Alexander.
Cassoday, Kansas, in the northeast corner of Butler County, is known as the “Prairie Chicken Capital of the World.” As of the 2020 census, its population was 113, and its total area was .39 square miles, all of it land.
As early as the 1850s, the Flint Hills were used to pasture cattle, a practice that continues to this day.
Cassoday was founded on land owned by John G. Guthrie in May 1869, two years before the township was organized. It was named for John B. Cassoday, chief justice of the Wisconsin Supreme Court.
In July 1886, Butler County Commissioners condemned a strip of land across the northwest corner of this townsite as a right-of-way for the Chicago, Kansas, and Western Railway Company. That year, Cassoday was laid out and platted on a townsite comprising 100 acres. Beautifully and favorably located in one of the most attractive portions of Kansas, the surrounding country was a picturesque landscape with broad rolling prairies.
Butler County, Kansas Landscape near Cassoday by Kathy Alexander.
Years later, Walter W. Colpitto, a civil engineer, surveyed the right-of-way for the Kansas City, Mexico, and Orient Railway. With the promise of a railroad, a building boom began. Soon, there were about a dozen homes, a two-story hotel, a grocery store, a general store, a lumberyard, a blacksmith shop, and a grist mill.
Atchison, Topeka & Santa Fe Railroad in Cassoday, Kansas by H. Killam, 1964.
The railroad arrived in 1904, and more businesses sprang up, including a bank, two more grocery stores, two doctors, a butcher shop, and an ice cream parlor.
A post office was established on July 9, 1906. Sycamore Springs, three miles west of Cassody, was absorbed by the larger town when its post office closed the same year.
A newspaper called Cassoday Times began publication in 1907 and continued until 1928
In 1910, Cassoday was 12 miles from the now-extinct town of De Graff, the nearest railroad station. Although so far from the railroad, it was the trading center for a rich agricultural district with a bank, well-stocked mercantile establishments, a money order post office with one rural route, telephone connections with the surrounding towns, a daily stage line to Eldorado, and a population of 300. That year, the first school, a four-room building, was erected. When two years of high school were added, these classes were taught in one of the second-floor rooms.
Cowboys in a stock pen in Cassoday, Kansas, 1950.
Pasturing cattle in the area boomed from the mid-1920s to the late 1950s, as cattle were brought in by rail from Texas, Oklahoma, and other states to spend the summer grazing on the rich grasses of the Flint Hills. In those days, more cattle were shipped from Aikman, Cassoday, Matfield Green, and Bazaar than any other 25-mile stretch on the Atchison, Topeka & Santa Fe Railroad. At that time, Cassoday was known as the Cow Capital of Kansas.
Afterward, cattle began to be shipped by truck, largely from pens in the pasture or at the Turnpike pen.
Cowboys were and are a vital part of the process, driving the cattle to and from the pens, branding, weighing, vaccinating, and caring for them while they are on the pasture. The ranchers and their horses drove the animals from the depot to the pasture and back with the know-how, tenacity, and quick reflexes of the true cowboy.
The post office in Cassoday, Kansas by Kathy Alexander.
The town is known as the “Prairie Chicken Capital of the World.” For the early settlers, prairie chicken was a regular part of their diet. However, the chickens were nearly wiped off the prairies before they were provided protection. After years of multiplying, they were plentiful again.
The nearest shopping center is 24 miles away.
Today, the community is served by Flinthills USD 492 public school district in Rosalia, Kansas, which includes the Flinthills Primary School in Cassoday for PreK to 5th grades and the Flinthills Middle/High School in Rosalia for 6th to 12th grades
Cassoday is on the Flint Hills Scenic Byway on the west edge of the bluestem pastures of the Flint Hills, about 20 miles from Eldorado, the Butler County seat. Most of its residents continue to work in agriculture and the cattle industry.
Cassoday, Kansas Church by Kathy Alexander.
©Kathy Alexander/Legends of Kansas, November 2024.
Also See:
Sources:
Blackmar, Frank W.; Kansas: A Cyclopedia of State History, Vol I; Standard Publishing Company, Chicago, IL 1912.
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