Osage Trust Land.
The land on which Belvidere, Kansas, stood once belonged to the Osage Indian Trust, which totaled 8,000,000 acres in a strip extending more than 250 miles across Kansas’s southern border. In 1870, Congress assigned the Osage to a reservation in Oklahoma and opened the land to settlement.
This place was first called Glick when it was established in Glick Township in Southeast Kiowa County. A post office opened on March 16, 1883.
With the Atchison, Topeka & Santa Fe Railroad coming through, wealthy ranchers Iowa Watson and C.P. Fullington took their wives to see the area. When they saw the area, they thought it couldn’t be more stunning, and dubbed the townsite Belvidere – or “beautiful view” in Italian. Watson and Fullington, both heavily involved in the Greensburg State Bank, along with other interests, founded the town and began promoting the little town their wives had named.
“Caught in the Boom! Property of the new town Belvidere. $100,000 worth sold in ten days,” stated an advertisement in the Greensburg Rustler on May 12, 1887. The ad also said the town was on the railroad and surrounded by fine “bottom farmland.”
The Santa Fe Railroad laid tracks through Glick on October 1, 1887.
Santa Fe Depot in Belvideir, Kansas, 1931.
Watson and Fullington platted the town on April 7, 1888. That year, a newspaper reported 25 new homes were under construction in the town situated in a clump of elms and cottonwoods along the Medicine River.
On April 26, 1890, the town and post office were renamed Belvidere. By 1891, the town had a population of 45. It soon became a cowboy town in the Gypsum Hills along the Medicine River.
Despite its beauty, potable water was scarce. The railroad began shipping water in tank cars and transferring it to a cistern near the depot. Crews drilled a well two miles East, and eventually piped water into town.
By 1900, Belvidere had grown to 75 people.
In 1910, it was located at the junction of two divisions of the Atchison, Topeka & Santa Fe Railroad system, about 18 miles Southeast of Greensburg, the county seat. At that time, it had a money order post office, telegraph and express offices, telephone connection with the surrounding country, and a population of 30.
At one time, six trains came through Belvidere each day. At this Kiowa County junction, once as many as 300 people lived in the area. However, over the years, two feed mills, two gas stations, the school, the stores, restaurants, and a hotel closed
Quite a few people lived here until the early 1950s. The Belvidere School closed in the late 1950s. At one time, it had a high school with half the school devoted to upper grades and half to elementary.
Business buildings in Belvidere, Kansas.
The post office closed on November 23, 1996, after more than 110 years of operation. The last train came through in 2002.
Today, this unincorporated community is located along the Medicine Lodge River. Nearby are the Roth Petroglyph Site and the Star Petroglyph Site, both on the National Register of Historic Places.
©Kathy Alexander/Legends of Kansas, updated September 2026
Also See:
Extinct Towns of Kiowa County, Kansas
Sources:
Blackmar, Frank W.; Kansas: A Cyclopedia of State History, Vol. I; Standard Publishing Company, Chicago, IL 1912.
Kansas Ghost Towns
Hutchinson News
Fort Hays State University