Shallow Water, Kansas by Kathy Alexander.
Shallow Water, Kansas, is a small town and census-designated place in Scott County. It is also officially an extinct town, as it no longer has a post office. As of the 2020 census, the population was 89.
Located in southern Scott County between Oakley and Garden City, the community was named for the shallow water table near the earth’s surface. The town was established in 1912 when H.J. Mott was given a half-section of land by the Friends Society (Quaker Church). The town was surveyed in June 1912, and many of the streets were named after Quakers. The first grade school was taught in Shallow Water in the fall of 1912, shortly after the town was established.
A post office was established on January 13, 1913, and a small frame building was relocated to town to serve as the first school.
Grain Elevator in Shallow Water, Kansas by Kathy Alexander.
The Friends Society built the community’s first church in 1914, and a general store opened in 1916. Even in its early years, the town was a small, close-knit community.
By 1917, a new stucco-framed school building was constructed, and in 1918, a second teacher was hired to establish a two-year high school. The following year, another teacher was added, and the high school became a four-year program. The new school was a two-and-a-half-story building with two rooms per floor. The two rooms upstairs were used for grades 3-8, and the high school was held downstairs. The former one-room schoolhouse remained on the site, east of the new school, and was used for the first and second grades.
The first class, comprising two students, graduated from the high school in 1922. Shallow Water consolidated with the district to the west in 1924, forming Shallow Water Consolidated District #10. A bus was used to transport students after consolidation.
In the 1920s, the community comprised several residences, an elevator, a lumber yard, a garage, a general store, and a post office. The railroad was the community’s centerpiece and, due to two grain elevators, became a grain hub and the focal point of the southern part of the county. The Garden City Gulf and Northern Railroad ran between Scott City and Garden City with a stop in Shallow Water. Early on, it took two trains to transport farmers and their families from Shallow Water to the city park in Scott City for Saturday picnics. Stockyards were located along the track in Shallow Water, and farmers would drive their cattle there for shipment to Kansas City, Missouri.
The principal industry in Scott County was an oil refinery, the Shallow Water Refining Company, located four miles south of Shallow Water. The Shallow Water oil pool was discovered by the Atlantic Oil Producing Company when the first well on the Vaniman farm was completed in December 1934. Crude oil from the adjoining Shallow Water oil pool was processed at this refinery, which had a daily capacity of 1,500 barrels. Oil with an unusually heavy gravity was found five feet below the top of the “Mississippi lime,” which was encountered at a depth of 4,665 feet.
Shallow Water Refining Company, 1939.
Between 1939 and 1942, the Works Progress Administration (WPA) built the Shallow Water School. Designed by Mann & Company, architects of Hutchinson, Kansas.
Plans for the school were developed in 1939 by School officials, who attempted to pass a bond issue to finance the new school, but their first attempt was unsuccessful. A second attempt was made after the language was revised to reflect the construction of a building for community use that could be used by all residents, regardless of whether they had school-age children. The community received assistance for the school through the Works Progress Administration. The only professionals on the project were the architect and the builder/construction supervisor. The Works Progress Administration required projects to be constructed using local materials. The absence of local trees or stone in the area necessitated building an adobe structure. Local workers built the school. The existing Adobe school replaced the stucco school, and a portion of the former school was incorporated into the Adobe school’s structure.
This mission-style building is Kansas’s only known adobe school.
The school was initially built to accommodate students through high school, so construction included a gymnasium and an adobe garage/shop in the back.
Shallow Water, Kansas School, by Kathy Alexander.
After the new school was built, the former one-room school, which had been used as a music room, was converted into a church, with Sunday School classes held in the new school building.
At the end of 1942, there were nine wells in the Shallow Water pool, and the pool produced 112,948 barrels of oil. The cumulative total production to the end of 1942 was 1,152,560 barrels.
At its peak, the town had two grain elevators and a small depot. The church has long been a center of the Shallow Water community. A new church was built in 1960, and the school continued to use it for certain school functions.
Its post office closed on October 31, 1957.
Expansions in 1962 and 1963 to the Adobe School brought the school to its current form.
State legislation in 1963 and 1965 mandated the consolidation of districts statewide. Scott County Unified School District No. 466 was formed in 1966, encompassing all of Scott County and small portions of Wichita, Logan, and Lane Counties.
In 1969, the high school in Shallow Water was closed, and by the mid-1970s, the elementary schools in Modoc and Manning were also closed. Following consolidation, the Shallow Water School served grades K-6.
The Shallow Water Refinery closed its operation in 1981.
Shallow Water, Kansas Church, courtesy of Wikipedia.
The elementary school closed in 2004.
Shallow Water School was listed on the Kansas Historical Resources Inventory and the National Register of Historic Places in 2005.
The church remains the center of the community today. The only operating business is a grain elevator, and the school continues to be used for community activities. Shallow Water is the northern terminus of the Garden City Western Railway.
Today, the community is served by the Scott County USD 466 public school district in Scott City. This small town still features grain elevators, numerous silos, a church, and a scattering of homes.
Shallow Water is located seven miles south of Scott City, off Highway 83.
©Kathy Alexander/Legends of Kansas, updated December 2025.
Also See:
Sources:
Kansas Geological Society
Living the New Deal
National Register of Historic Places
Wikipedia