Clay Center, Kansas Depot.
In September 1897, the Kansas Central Railroad, which had entered bankruptcy receivership in October 1893, was purchased at a foreclosure auction for $200,000 and rechristened the Leavenworth, Kansas & Western Railroad, a Union Pacific Railroad subsidiary. It planned to expand the line to the western border of Kansas and northward into Nebraska.
However, financial woes dogged the line, and in 1908, it was sold to the Union Pacific Railroad. After that, the former narrow gauge was operated as part of an extensive network of Union Pacific Railroad branches in the area.
With improved highway transportation and losses spurred by the Great Depression, the line became expendable. It had virtually no traffic except agricultural products, which were being lost to trucks, and its physical properties were poor. On July 1, 1933, the United Pacific Railroad applied to the Interstate Commerce Commission to abandon the 143 miles from Knox at Leavenworth to Clay Center, a step incidental to its extensive abandonment of branch lines. Also to be abandoned was the portion of a branch from Junction City to Concordia north of Clay Center, a distance of 35.81 miles; all of its Belleville Branch from Lawrenceburg to Belleville, Kansas, a distance of 17.15 miles; to operate under trackage rights over the line of the Atchison, Topeka & Santa Fe Railroad between Miltonvale and Concordia, in Cloud County, Kansas, a distance of 20.06 miles; and to construct a connecting track 800 feet in length at Concordia, Kansas. These arrangements were approved on October 8, 1934, and the Knox-Clay Center line was abandoned on January 10, 1935.
©Kathy Alexander/Legends of Kansas, November 2024.
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