Land in Pleasant View Township in Cherokee County, Kansas, courtesy of Google Maps.
Pleasantview, Kansas, in Pleasant View Township, is a lost town that was located in the northeast corner of Cherokee County.
Cherokee Brave.
Walter Merrick was about the first settler in the township in 1865. John H. Scott came to the township in 1866, and about the same time, John Rawlings, Henry Stuckey, Lawrence Conklin, and Joseph Galpine settled in the township. That year, the U.S. Government entered into another treaty with the Cherokee Tribe that ceded their Neutral Land in Kansas and moved them to Indian Territory (Oklahoma). That same year, in August, the county began to be officially organized, with the governor appointing temporary county commissioners and officers and designating Pleasant View as the temporary county seat.
A few months later, an election was held on November 6 to elect permanent officers and commissioners. The following year, on November 5, 1867, an election was held to determine the permanent home of the county seat. Columbus and Baxter Springs were the contestants. Baxter Springs received 136 votes, and Columbus received three. The commissioners held their last meeting at Pleasant View on April 10, 1868, and the first at Baxter Springs on April 14.
There were some incidents out of the ordinary run of things, even in frontier life. An unknown man was seized out of Spring River, near Merrick’s Ford, near Waco, Missouri, and a man by the name of Wyrick was suspected of being his murderer. Both had lived in Pleasant View Township. Another man by the name of Estes was suspected of being associated with Wyrick in the foul deed. The few settlers in the township got together and ran them out of the country, and they never returned.
At about the same time, a man by the name of Gifford was suspected of stealing cattle. He was taken out by the people and hanged from a tree in broad daylight. Nothing was said of the matter, and there was no effort made to prosecute those engaged in the execution of the suspected man. This was before there were any courts in the county, and the people would not wait for the slow processes of the law, which would have required taking the case to the court in Fort Scott, Kansas.
As early as 1868, Harry Hemming, A.O. Webb, Henry Rice, John H. Dyer, Levi Keithley, A. Lamb, G. Keith, S. B. Crist, James H. Dyer, P. Pattyson, and D. A. Stephens were among the citizens of Pleasant View Township.
The name changed from Pleasant View to Pleasantview in 1877. Its post office closed on November 30, 1903. It was located 11 miles northeast of Columbus and six miles from Weir.
©Kathy Alexander/Legends of Kansas, updated September 2025.
Also See:
Extinct Towns of Cherokee County
Sources:
Blackmar, Frank W.; Kansas: A Cyclopedia of State History, Vol I; Standard Publishing Company, Chicago, IL 1912.
Cutler, William G.; History of Kansas; A.T. Andreas, Chicago, IL, 1883.
Kansas Historical Society Post Office History