It’s Worth Repeating: Stories of Early Southwest History

 

Fairs and Celebrations Held in Ghost Town of Ryansville in 1880s

 

(Third Installment)

By Heinie Schmidt

 

As Bennett and Smith note in their early-day booklet, it was expected that the Kingman branch would come up the Arkansas river to Fonda, Ryansville and Fort Dodge, cross the river at Fort Dodge, and come on into Dodge City to join with the Santa Fe. The old map Monte Hubbell gave me shows that very clearly.

 

The Kingman branch is referred to by all the oldtimers as the Santa Fe branch. The Arkansas, Kansas and Colorado line was taken over, in 1888, by the Rock Island, which still owns and operates it. It is clear that the dispute here was a part of the Santa Fe race with the Rock Island for this territory. When the Rock Island beat the Santa Fe into Greensburg, where the Santa Fe had dug the Big Well, the Kingman branch was abandoned.

 

Just this close did Ryansville come to being sustained as a town among present day cities.

 

After the death of Pat Ryan and the abandonment of the Kingman branch, the people from the city of Ford came over to Ryansville and said to the citizens there, "If you will move over to Ford with us, we'll give you lots for your buildings and some extra lots for your trouble in moving."

 

That is how Tom Gray got his alfalfa field he called Ryansville, Jr. Those were the extra lots he was given when he moved from Ryansville to Ford.

 

August Snook of Dodge City says there were traces of the sod houses and dugouts of Ryansville until the Pueblo flood wiped them out as the water came raging down the Arkansas river.

 

August Snook was a member of one of the pioneer settler families of the city of Ford.

 

Both Al Olive and August Snook rode in the races at Ryansville.

 

Olive says he rode in a Fourth of July horse race at celebration on Pat Ryan's ranch in 1883. There was no Ryansville at that time, but Ryan had his ranch house there. Besides the horse race, there were sack races and potato races, and all the other old contests, including catching a greased pig and climbing a greased pole.

 

There was a mile oval track on which the horses ran. Clark Turner, a negro hostler who had been with General Custer, was working for Ryan. He didn't have a rider for the horse, and Olive was selected as the jockey. When the horse and rider came around the turn, coming into the home stretch, the horse left the track. Olive got him back on the track and came in second.

 

I wish every reader could see Al Olive telling the story of that race. He rides it as well as telling it.

 

"Al," I said, "you're really back in the saddle again. But weren't you a pretty young kid to be riding a horse in that race?"

 

"Why every kid in this count try could ride a horse," he said, indignantly. "They were born to the saddle!"

 

August Snook supplied the explanation for the horse leaving the track.

 

His family also was a pioneer family at Ford, settling there in 1885.

 

In 1886 and 1887 they had a fair just west of Ryansville. There were exhibits and horse races. Snook entered and rode a little black mare. His horse left the track just at the turn. He said he thinks he got his horse back on the track, and his wife insists he won the race.

 

The reason horses left the track was that there was a half-mile straightaway when they came around, rather than keeping to the oval track.

 

Mrs. Agnes Herzer of Dodge City says there was a grove west of Ryansville and picnics and big dinners were held there. This was the site of the fairs where there were fine exhibits of grains and vegetables.

 

Describing Ryansville, Mrs. Herzer says that Tom Gray and Fred Gray, brothers, had a restaurant on Front street in Dodge City. They were coaxed into going to Ryansville and had a restaurant there and a little hotel. She says the J. W. Shearers lived at Ryansville. Shearer was one of the founders of Mullinville. C. E. Hatfield, later at Ford, also was a resident of Ryansville.

 

The little town also had a newspaper, Mrs. Herzer says—the Ryansville Boomer, edited by a man named Prouty. The press was moved to Ford, Mrs. Herzer says, and I believe it was this piece of Southwest history that was stored in an old shed there and sold for junk during World War I.

 

Mrs. Kathleen Emrie of Ford describes Pat Ryan's house as being built on the bank of Mulberry creek. There was a dam near the river on the Mulberry, and another a mile upstream on the creek. This made a big mile-long lake, right up to the dam at the river.

 

"Mrs. Ryan [see photo at left] could sit on the back porch of her ranch house and catch fish for dinner," Mrs. Emrie says. "She caught beautiful fish out of the lake."

 

Mrs. Ryan stayed at Ryansville until 1892, according to Mrs. Emrie. By that time the town had been gone for a long time.

 

So Ryansville has passed into history without a trace.

 

Not even the brand that the family of R. R. Bentley saw on their way from Spearville to their Ford county claims, is left.

 

That brand was the LR connected. The L stood for Lenore, Mrs. Ryan's first name—she was Lenore Fisher—and the R stood for Pat Ryan. That brand and Tom Gray's Ryansville Jr., in the story of this ghost town both bespeak the practical and the sentimental in the hearts of our pioneer fathers.

 

–Newspaper clipping saved by Verna (Dawson) Karns.

[This article, third of a series of three, appeared on Page Two of The High Plains Journal dated Thursday, July 15, 1954. Sources on the Internet indicate that Ryansville was vacated in 1895.]

 

This map from the US Census Bureau shows both Ford and Bucklin in relation to the Arkansas River, Highway 154 (Ford), Highway 54 (Bucklin), and the GPS coordinates.

 

NOTE: This map was not included in the original newspaper article. It is added here to highlight the locations of the surviving towns of Ford and Bucklin, and their relation to the Arkansas River and the highways.