Crystal Springs, Kansas by Dave Alexander.
Crystal Springs, Kansas, is an unincorporated community of Lake Township in Harper County. It is also an extinct town with no post office.
The community was first settled by Presbyterian and Methodist residents. It was named for nearby water springs, making it a good watering stop for the railroad. Soon, a school and Presbyterian and Methodist churches were built.
The Atchison, Topeka & Santa Fe Railroad Depot in Crystal Springs was called Eula.
When a post office was established on January 16, 1885, it was called Crystal Springs, and Naomi L. Bukins was the postmaster. However, when the Atchison, Topeka & Santa Fe Railroad came through, the station was named Eula after the first stationmaster’s wife.
The Methodist Church at Crystal Syrings was dedicated just before a tornado hit the area in 1892, partially destroying it. The church was rebuilt. The Crystal Springs congregation also helped the Silver Creek Township congregation start their church. Most of their ministers were circuit preachers from Harper and Attica.
In the Fall of 1893, Presbyterian, Methodist, and other settlers abandoned the town and left their land to mortgage companies to seek property during the Cherokee Strip Land Run in Oklahoma.
In 1902, the M.A. Troyer family, Amish Mennonites, moved to Crystal Springs from McPherson County, searching for land. When they arrived, Crystal Springs consisted of a depot, a post office, a blacksmith shop, stockyards, two grain elevators, and four dwelling houses. Except for one family, the remaining Amish Mennonite families in McPherson County had joined them by 1904. Religious services were held in Nebo schoolhouse, one mile north of Crystal Springs.
Mennonite Church in Crystal Springs, Kansas.
Later that year, their former church building was dismantled, and the lumber was hauled to Hutchinson and shipped to Harper by rail. The benches, pulpit, doors, windows, and frames were hauled to Crystal Springs in wagons pulled by teams for about 85 miles. The church was rebuilt on a site about a quarter of a mile east and about three-quarters of a mile south of Crystal Springs. The building was dedicated on January 29, 1905. For several years, some of the services were conducted in German.
In 1910, Crystal Springs continued to be a station on the Atchison, Topeka & Santa Fe Railroad about halfway between Harper and Attica. At that time, it had a post office, an express office, telephone connections, and a population of 38. The Methodist Church building was sold to the Silver Creek church that year.
In 1917, a bank was established in the community.
Crystal Springs, Kansas School.
In 1921, the Amish Mennonite Church of Crystal Springs merged with the Kansas-Missouri Mennonite Conference, thus dropping their Amish affiliation.
A new church was erected in 1928 and was free of debt. The church still holds services today, about a mile south of Crystal Springs, west of the cemetery.
The city continued to prosper with a feed store, general store, cream station, two-grain elevators, a post office, a depot, two railroad section houses, and a stockyard.
However, in the 1940s, the community began to decline, and in 1950, the village comprised 15 families with a population of 50.
The Mennonite congregation purchased a parsonage in Crystal Springs in 1952.
A crow on top of abandoned grain elevator in Crystal Springs, Ks. Photo by Dave Alexander.
Old bank in Crystal Springs, Kansas by Kathy Alexander.
The school and the bank closed in the following years, and the grocery and meat market burned down. The post office was located in the postmaster’s residence, Mrs. Miller and Crystal Springs students attended school in Attica. However, there was still a grocery store, a slaughter and meat processing plant, a service station and bulk oil plant, a machine shop, and a grain elevator.
Crystal Springs post office closed on May 5, 1976.
In 2000, the area population was 22.
An old house in Crystal Springs, Kansas by Kathy Alexander.
Today, the community still boasts a few homes, a wooden grain elevator, the old bank building, and the still active Mennonite church is a mile south. It is served by Chaparral USD 361 public school district in Anthony.
Crystal Springs is 12 miles northwest of Anthony.
©Kathy Alexander/Legends of Kansas, November 2024.
Also See:
Extinct Towns of Harper County
Box car shed in Crystal Springs, Kansas by Kathy Alexander.
Sources:
Anabaptist Mennonite Encyclopedia
Harper County Churches
Harper County Kansas GenWeb
Journal-Record of Oklahoma City, 2012
Wikipedia