The County Seat War in Gray County
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The stories of the different county-seat wars that marked the history of the development of western Kansas, differed each from the other, but there was one point of resemblance common to them all. All of them were distinguished by a disregard of honor and a willingness on the part of both parties to the contest to violate about every civil and moral law in order to win. In most of the county-seat wars the fighting, that is the real killing, commenced before, at, or immediately after, the alleged election, but in the case of Gray County the bloody finale was postponed for more than a year. The county-seat war in Gray County did not differ in that respect from the others, but it had wider ramifications and elements of almost romance that distinguished it from all the rest.
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Asa T. Soule
The central figure in the drama, mostly tragedy but which contained certain elements of comedy, was A. T. Soule, of Rochester, New York, reputed to be worth $10,000,000, accumulated from the sale of Hop Bitters to a credulous public. Why Soule came to Kansas is somewhat hard to understand. He had, if reports were true, more money than he could spend in the purchase of mere creature comforts. He did not need to dangers, and vicissitudes of life on the wind-swept plains of western Kansas.
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Asa t. Soule founded the town of Ingalls and to insure it as the gray county seat, he built a bogus railroad. His other exploits included arming men to raid the town of Cimarron and invested in Dodge City land to take advantage of the growth Soule was sure would come with successes of irrigation. His main interest lay in the profits to be made from the Eureka irrigation canal company. It took two years to dig the 96-mile canal that snaked up the north side of the Arkansas River through gray and ford counties.
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It may be that there was the lure of adventure drawing him on, or it may be that he thought he saw in the far-flung prairie landscape where the sun rose and set without a tree to cast a shadow either in the morning or at eve, the setting for an empire of which he would be the builder. At any rate he came and as a result of his coming there was strife and bloodshed, the memories of which last among the older inhabitants even till now. For a man who had succeeded in building up a great fortune in a business venture in the East, A. T. Soule's projected enterprises in Kansas were singularly unsuccessful.
Soule Canal
He built a great irrigating ditch in western Kansas, which did not irrigate, although he did succeed in floating many hundreds of thousands of dollars of bonds, which gilded promises to pay may yet, no doubt, be found in the vaults of disappointed eastern purchasers. His plan to locate the county seat and build a great town on the banks of the Arkansas River finally came to naught; the town he organized still lingers, but has less than a hundred inhabitants, and the county seat has long since gone to its rival.
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County Seat War
In the 1887 county seat election in Gray County, three towns were vying for the position: Montezuma, Ingalls, and Cimarron. Millionaire Asa T. Soule persuaded the residents of Montezuma to withdraw their petition for county seat and vote for Ingalls. To accomplish this Soule promised to build Montezuma a railroad and freely dispersed checks ranging from $100 to $500 to its residents. In spite of Soule's efforts, Cimarron was the winner of the election. In validating the election returns, the Kansas Supreme Court ordered the county records to be moved to Ingalls. This is the story of an attempt to remove the remaining records from the Cimarron county clerks office on the morning of January 12, 1889.
TOWN OF CIMARRON 1880'S
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TOWN OF INGALL'S 1880'S
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Battle of Cimarron Book Audio Sample |
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The Battle of Cimarron tells the story of a famous gunfight between the people of Cimarron, Kansas, and a group of lawmen led by Bill Tilghman. The gunfight occurred on January 12, 1889, when Tilghman and his invaders attempted to take the county records from the Old Gray County Courthouse back to Ingalls. The story is told from a first person perspective and is divided into six sections, including interactive media.
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Available at iBook StoreYou can now purchase the Battle of the Cimarron at Apple iBooks Store. The book is available for download with iBooks on your Mac or iOS device. The Multi-touch books can be read with iBooks on your Mac or iOS device. Books with interactive features may work best on an iOS device. iBooks on your Mac requires OS X 10.9 or later.
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Available at Amazon KindleThe Print Replica of each book features interactive content supported only on Fire Tablets (3rd Generation and above) and Kindle apps for Android phones and tablets. The links allow the reader to fully immerse in the story through enhanced sound files, pop up images and video files. Please note that customers who download a book to other devices will receive a standard Print Replica book.
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