Cheyenne at the Disappearing Creek, called White Woman by Howard Terpning, photo courtesy Swoyer Fine Art & Collectibles.
White Woman Creek is a seasonal stream in western Kansas that often disappears underground.
Rising in eastern Colorado, it flows southeastward across Greeley and Wichita Counties into Scott County. About four miles east of the Scott County line, it turns northeast, flowing into the Scott Basin, a large depressional area southeast of Scott City. Sand Creek, which rises in southwest Wichita County, parallels White Woman Creek across southern Wichita County, joining White Woman Creek just east of the Scott County line. With the exception of Ladder Creek downstream, where springs provide water for a permanent flow, all streams in Wichita and Greeley Counties are intermittent. They contain flowing water only during and after heavy rains.
The creek is known for its underground water, which made the area an essential source of water for the Cheyenne Indians and later for white settlers.
White Woman Creek got its name following an Indian attack in the late 1860s, which led to the creation of the White Woman Basin and the mysterious disappearance of the creek’s water into the ground. A few miles to the south of Scott City, White Woman Basin is a tract of low, bottomland, 25,000 acres in extent. It is a black alluvial deposit of great depth.
In this basin, the White Woman suddenly sinks into the earth and takes its subterranean course along and beneath the basin, where it is forever lost to sight. The annual overflow of the river floods the basin with its surplus waters, which quickly sink again into the bed of the lost stream. It is claimed that so strong is the current of this subterranean river, at flood time, that the sound of its swift waters can be heard distinctly some distance from the mouth of several of these sink holes, and the listener is left to wonder when and where these wild waters shall again see the light of day.
An Indian war party attacked homesteads in the area, including an Army ambulance. A mutilated body of a soldier was found in the ambulance carnage, and settlers later learned that a woman was traveling with the ambulance and was kidnapped by the Indians. The woman, to avoid the same tortures she had seen inflicted upon the ambulance driver, stole a rope from the Indians while they camped, ran to a tree on the banks of this little stream, and hanged herself before her captors could stop her. From that time, the story goes, the Indians called this stream White Woman Creek.
White Woman Creek is linked to several historical legends and a ghost story where a woman’s ghost now wanders the creek bed.
White Woman Creek Bed in Wichita, County, Kansas by Kathy Alexander.
©Kathy Alexander/Legends of Kansas, October 2025.
Also See:
Ghost Stories Across the Nation
Sources:
Kansas Geological Survey
Scott County, Kansas History
Wichita County Economic Development