Gove County, Kansas: History
=== Early history ===
Eighty million years ago, Gove County was part of an ancient inland sea known as the Western Interior Seaway. Many students still visit the Castle Rock Badlands today to explore fossils.
For many millennia, the Great Plains of North America were inhabited by nomadic Native Americans. From the 16th to the 18th centuries, the Kingdom of France claimed ownership of large parts of North America. In 1762, after the French and Indian War, France secretly ceded New France to Spain, per the Treaty of Fontainebleau.
In 1802, Spain returned most of the land to France, but kept the title to about 7,500 square miles. In 1803, most of the land for modern-day Kansas was acquired by the United States from France as part of the 828,000-square-mile Louisiana Purchase for 2.83 cents per acre.
In 1854, the Kansas Territory was organized; then in 1861, Kansas became the 34th U.S. state. In 1868, Gove County was established and named for Granville Llewellyn Gove, member of the 11th Regiment Kansas Volunteer Cavalry, and son of Moses Gove, a former mayor of Manhattan, Kansas.
In 2020, USA Today profiled Gove County during the COVID-19 pandemic in the United States, and called it the "deadliest place in America" due to it having the highest death rate from COVID-19 compared to any other county in the nation: One out of every 132 people. The first deaths were reported on October 7; as of November 2020, 20 residents died from the virus, and 314 other positive cases were reported. The article attributed the high death rate to predominant public opposition towards wearing face masks, doubts over the pandemic's severity, and the county's high median age, all of which left residents highly vulnerable.