Coats, Kansas – Extinct in Pratt County

The Coats Courant newspaper began publication in 1905.

Coats was incorporated as a city within the now-defunct Grant Township in 1909.

In 1910, it was described as one of the county’s principal towns and as a station on the Wichita & Englewood division of the Atchison, Topeka & Santa Fe Railroad. At that time, it had a bank, a money order post office with one rural route, express and telegraph offices, telephone connections, a grain elevator, a hotel, a weekly newspaper called the Courant, and a population of 269.

The town’s population peaked at 383 in 1920. At that time, it had many thriving businesses, including three general merchandise stores, three grain elevators, one drugstore, two livery barns, two hotels, one graded school, a state bank, three hardware stores, two lumber yards, two auto garages, four blacksmith shops, a cement block plant, a barber shop, a meat market, two real estate offices, one millinery store, and a jewelry store. It was on the Englewood Branch of the Santa Fe System and served as the trading point for a large area of prosperous agricultural country.