Add an Article Add an Event Edit

City Of Florence

511 North Main Street
620-878-4296

About Us:

The Florence Town Company was a group of men who learned of the proposed route of the Atchison, Topeka and Santa Fe Railroad and decided on a town site where the railroad would cross the Cottonwood River. The Florence Town Company consisting of ex-Kansas Governor Samuel Crawford, James Riggs, A. S. Johnson, Enoch Chase and John Martin was organized in 1870.

The new town site was named Florence in honor of Samuel Crawford's daughter. The Florence town site was filed on December 4, 1870 in the NW 1/4 of the NE 1/4 of Section 7, Township 21, Range 5E and consisted of 42 blocks. It was bounded on the east by the Cottonwood River and the south by Doyle Creek.

The AT&SF rail line cut across the southeast corner of the town site. The first lots in town were sold to B. Haywood, J. M. Steel, S. J. Crawford, C. W. Adams and L. P. Heritage. Haywood, Steel and Crawford bought as many as 50 lots each for resale to other settlers moving into the new town. The investment of these men was sound reasoning. For quite a while, Florence would be the only town in Marion County with a railroad.

In early 1871, the blocks of the new town site were laid out and staked. Early Florence settlers had few comforts. Grocers set up shop in tents, the bank was making loans and deposits in a shed and many families were still living in the wagons they rode to the town site in. Hotel accommodations were rugged, with travelers staying in a room with two beds, three men to a bed. The only permanent house in the town at the time was a two story log house built by Mahlon Riggs.