Meade County, Kansas: History
For millennia, the Great Plains of North America were inhabited by nomadic Native Americans.
In 1854, the Kansas Territory was organized, then in 1861 Kansas became the 34th U.S. state.
In 1873, Meade County was established. The first permanent settlement in the county was established in 1878 at Meade City, 12 miles north of the city of Meade. Pearlette was settled shortly thereafter in 1879 by a company of sixteen families from Zanesville, Ohio led by John Jobling. The railroad first entered the country in 1887, ending a decade in which supplies had to be hauled from Dodge City.
On August 24, 1874, in Meade County, Mochi, Medicine Water, and the other members of their band of Cheyenne massacred a surveying party led by Capt. Oliver Francis Short, who had fought in the Union Army during the American Civil War. This event became known as the Lone Tree Massacre. Short, his 14-year-old son Truman, and four other members of the party were killed, with three of them being scalped.
Meade County became known as a hotbed of thievery and cattle rustling in the 1880s and 1890s. Eva Dalton Whipple lived with her husband in Meade County and allowed her house to be used as a hide for her brothers, the infamous Dalton Gang. The Dalton Gang Hideout and Museum was restored by the WPA in the 1930s and today is on the National Register of Historic Places.
A large sinkhole filled with saltwater, known as the Salt Well, appeared in the county on March 16, 1879. William Sturgis first produced commercial solar salt from the Salt Well in 1880, and floating in its salty water was a tourist attraction at the turn of the 20th century.
Like the rest of southwestern Kansas, Meade County was devastated by the Dust Bowl in the 1930s.