Spent a whole afternoon chasing a ghost town on a 1874 map of Kansas

Last month I was looking at this old Kansas map from 1874 and saw a town called 'Harpersville' marked right near the Arkansas River. I got curious and searched for it on modern maps and in county records, but it's absolutely nowhere. Turns out it was a planned settlement that never even got a post office, just a name on a surveyor's map that faded into nothing. Has anyone else run into fictional or failed towns on old maps that led you on a wild goose chase?

2 comments

2 Comments

richard11017d ago

Yeah this happens more than people realize. I was looking at an 1870s map of Nebraska once and found a town called "Brenham" marked pretty clearly. Drove out there on a Saturday with my kid expecting at least some kind of foundation or old well. Nothing. Just a soybean field and a couple of bored cows. Turned out the whole thing was a railroad land scam, they'd mark towns on maps to sell lots to people who never showed up.

mark4917d ago

Laughing at @richard110 and his soybean field adventure, that's pretty much how my Harpersville hunt ended too. I half expected at least a rusted out plow or a foundation stone, but nope, just a bunch of tall grass and a pissed off badger lol. These railroad scams were basically real estate trolling before the internet existed. Guess we both got outsmarted by a dead guy with a pen and a survey map.