Eustis, Kansas building in the 1880s.
Eustis, Kansas, is a long-abandoned town in Sherman County.
This place got its start when P.S. Eustis and O.R. Phillips organized the Lincoln Land Company, which laid out the town in the spring of 1885. Mr. Eustis was an agent of the Burlington & Missouri River Railroad, and the new town was named after him. A post office was established on July 9, 1886. At about the same time, J.H. Tait started a newspaper called the Sherman County Dark Horse.
When Sherman County was organized on September 20, 1886, Eustis was named the temporary county seat. On November 8, 1886, the voters of Sherman County held an election to decide which town would serve as the temporary county seat: Sherman Center or Eustis. Eustis won and began constructing a courthouse.
Another election was held in the spring of 1887, and Eustis won again. In July 1887, Eustis had a population of 500, a public school, three banks, and another newspaper, the Sherman County Democrat. Other businesses included a brick manufacturing plant. an insurance office, two grocery stores, two attorneys, three general stores, six real estate offices, two lumber companies, a livery stable, two dressmakers, two blacksmiths, two painters, a shoemaker, three drug stores, two hotels, a furniture store, two hardware stores, two doctors, two restaurants, a meat market, a pool hall, and a harness maker.
A county committee met in Eustis on August 23, 1887, for the purpose of setting up an election for a permanent county seat. Voltaire, Sherman Center, and an individual named B. Taylor, who owned land near the center of the county, presented their proposals to the committee. Eustis did not do so because the citizens said that when the courthouse was finished, it would be turned over to the county. But at the next meeting, a new town company from the Goodland town site presented its proposal, which the town committee approved. An election was held in the fall of 1887, and the citizens could vote for Goodland, Eustis, Voltaire, or B. Taylor. Goodland became the permanent county seat, but the citizens of Eustis were not about to give up their temporary county seat. They had the county records, and the court still recognized the town as the county seat.
Eventually, the officials in Goodland hired a group of armed cowboys who captured a county commissioner and forced him to let them remove the record books, all without a shot being fired. A few short weeks after this confrontation, the citizens of Eustis moved most of the town to Goodland. The Eustis post office closed on July 20, 1888.
©Kathy Alexander/Legends of Kansas, January 2026.
Also See:
Extinct Towns of Sherman County
Sources:
Digging History
Fitzgerald, Daniel. “Faded Dreams: More Ghost Towns of Kansas”. University Press of Kansas, 1994.
Fort Hays State University
Kansas Post Office History