Garden City History

Garden City began in 1878 when brothers James and William Fulton, who had come hunting wild horses, filed homesteads along the Arkansas River and laid plans for a town in an unsettled region, with John A. Stevens, a young member of Fulton’s outfit, as the third founder. A year later, promoter C. J. Jones joined them and helped persuade the Santa Fe Railroad to place a depot at the tiny settlement. The town took its name from a garden planted by William Fulton’s wife, Luticia, in the summer of 1878. Within forty years, by 1918, what had begun as a two-building settlement had become a thriving center of commerce for southwest Kansas. Its streets remained unpaved for many years, though they were first graded in the spring of 1886, and the city used horse-drawn waterwagons to control dust. In 1912 the city began oiling Main Street, and after World War I it moved to pave downtown more permanently. By August 1919 plans were in place to pave Main Street with brick from Maple Street to Kansas Avenue, about one mile, after which several other streets were also bricked. In 1964 Main Street was resurfaced with asphalt from the railroad tracks to Kansas Avenue.

Garden City, Kansas · United States