Cawker City was founded in 1870 by four men, who played a poker game to decide who the town would be named after, and the winner, Colonel E. H. Cawker, built the first house in town. Incorporated on March 20, 1874, it grew quickly and soon had mills, banks, churches, an opera house, a city auditorium, and full-time train service. By 1880, its population reached 2,000, and in 1884 a new high school building replaced the one built in 1871. In 1884 local women took over the men's library club and stored the books in the Hesperian Library, which now houses a museum. After its peak, the population slowly fell, and the last passenger train came to Cawker City in 1960, as happened in many Kansas towns. Today it is a small town of around 600 people in Mitchell County in north central Kansas, founded near Waconda Springs and now at the midpoint of the north shore of Waconda Lake. Its downtown Wisconsin Street Historic District, along U.S. Highway 24, is listed on the National Register of Historic Places. Built in 1886, the Cawker City United Methodist Church organ is the oldest church organ in Kansas; Henry Pilcher's Sons of Louisville, Kentucky, built it for the congregational church in Kinsley, Kansas, and the Cawker Methodists bought it in 1931 and placed it in their native limestone church. Frank Stoeber began a ball of twine on his farm in 1953; by 1957 it weighed 5,000 pounds, stood 8 feet high, and contained 1,175,180 feet of twine. He gave it to Cawker City in 1961, and the Cawker City Community Club, its official owner and caretaker, adds to it each year during the Twine-A-Than held with the annual Cawker City Picnic and Parade. Churches, civic organizations, and the North Central Kansas Genealogical Society, which has its headquarters there, help support the community and its businesses.