Woodruff, Kansas – Extinct in Phillips County

 

Woodruff, Kansas, is a census-designated place in Granite Township of Phillips County. It is also officially an “extinct” town as its post office closed decades ago. As of the 2020 census, the population was 13.

Located on Prairie Dog Creek, Woodruff was platted and laid out by the Lincoln Land Company on July 23, 1885. It was named after the grandfather of a railroad worker’s child. A post office was established on November 7, 1885, with James H. Hill as postmaster. When the Chicago, Burlington & Quincy Railroad reached the area, it attracted entrepreneurs, and businesses began to emerge. Woodruff, at the time, was a hustling and booming town of about 300 people.

The Evangelical United Brethren Church at Woodruff was organized in January 1887 following a revival meeting led by Reverend T.J. Fee, assisted by the Methodist minister, in the Old Sod house in town.

In 1900, the town boasted a general merchandise store, a real estate agent, a hardware and farm implements dealer, a blacksmith, and several farmers and stock raisers.

Among the highlights of the newspaper’s columns that week were an estimate that more than a million bushels of corn would be raised in the immediate vicinity and a list of livestock feeders with the number of head of livestock fed. John Steen was listed as the champion cornhusker in that area, having husked and cribbed 2030 bushels of corn in 18 days, for an average of 113 bushels per day.

In 1910, it was still on the Chicago, Burlington & Quincy Railroad. At that time, it had a bank, a weekly newspaper called the Budget, a hotel, an alfalfa mill, numerous retail establishments, telegraph and express offices, a money order post office, and a population of 200.

Woodruff’s post office closed on March 15, 1956. Afterward, all business buildings were removed from the townsite.

Woodruff was located just south of the Nebraska State Line, 20 miles north of Phillipsburg, the county seat.