Attica, Kansas

 

Attica, Kansas, is a small town in Ruella Township of Harper County. As of the 2020 census, the town’s population was 516, and its total area was 0.64 square miles.

The town was named after the historical region of Attica, in Greece.

A post office was established on July 21, 1880, located Southeast of present-day Attica on a farm known as the E.L. Thomas farm. However, I.L. Beeson preempted it, and the post office was soon moved to the G.H. Harkham farm. When the new town of Attica was started, they agreed to move the Post Office of Attica to the new townsite.

In late June 1884, Colonel W.G. Dickenson, General Agent for the Arkansas Valley Town Company, purchased for the company the land that now comprises the present site of Attica. It soon became the terminus of the Atchison, Topeka & Santa Fe Railroad.

Alden Speare platted Attica, and it was recorded at Anthony on July 9, 1884.

This land had been part of what was known as the Osage Trust Land. The Government held this land in trust for the Osage Tribe and provided by law that settlers might preempt it in tracts of 160 acres, paying $1.25 per acre. This money went into a fund for the tribe.

Miss Luzine C. Walker preempted a quarter section of land on which most of Attica now stands. In contrast, the West part of Attica was purchased by the town company from Richard Bodkin and his daughter, Mrs. Athelton, who, like Miss Walker, had pre-empted the land from the government.

The first business transaction in the new town was said to have been the selling of $1,200.00 worth of lots to C.F. Meigs, of Harper County. The transaction reportedly took place in a buggy on Main Street, two blocks South of the depot.

Attica was a boom town that grew up almost overnight. Within 90 days, the original townsite was sold out, and a new addition was put on the market. An ox team hauled the lumber for the first building from Harper. J.E. Hamilton built the building in July 1884, and the Tredenick business building still stands there. He established the town’s first grocery and general store. Another early building was the National Hotel.

The town was incorporated on February 16, 1885, with a population of 1,500 people.

When the Cherokee Outlet in northern Oklahoma opened to a Land run in 1893, many people moved South to that territory.

Afterward, the population grew. Attica was one of the few towns that more than doubled its population between 1900 and 1910. In the former year, the population was 311, and in the latter it was 737, a growth that speaks well for the town’s location and the enterprising spirit of its inhabitants.

In 1910, Attica was described as one of Harper County’s principal incorporated towns. At that time, remained the eastern terminus of a division of the Atchison, Topeka & Santa Fe Railroad that ran West to Medicine Lodge, Kansas. Being situated in the midst of a fine agricultural district, about 12 miles northwest of Anthony, Attica was an important commercial center and shipping point. It had a bank, a grain elevator, a weekly newspaper called the Independent, an international money order post office, with two rural delivery routes, telegraph, telephone and express accommodations, good schools, and churches of several of the leading denominations.

Attica’s population peaked at 756 in 1930.

By 1949, Attica was still at a convenient junction of the two railway lines of the Atchison, Topeka & Santa Fe Railroad, with the main line passing through Attica, going Southwest and extending through Texas, New Mexico, and up the West Coast of the United States. The other was a branch of the main line, which went West to Medicine Lodge and Belvidere, Kansas.

On May 12, 2004, an F2 tornado damaged the town and received widespread coverage on local and national television.

Today, Attica USD 511 serves the community, including Attica Jr/Sr High School and Puls Elementary.

Attica is about 17 miles from the Oklahoma state line, and about the same distance northwest of Anthony, Kansas, the county seat.