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 <img src="https://media.eaglewebservices.com/public/2021/2/1612552785478.jpeg" alt="Early Junction City, KS" />
 <figcaption>Early Junction City, KS</figcaption>
 </figure>By Dr. Ferrell MillerGeary County Historical Society Board Member“Happy 162nd Anniversary, Junction City”Gaylynn Childs, retired Executive Director of the Geary County Historical Society wrote an article for the Junction City Union newspaper that “On February 8, 1859, the Kansas Territorial Legislature granted corporation papers making Junction City a town after four attempts. 	The first name was assigned when steamboat Hartford, loaded with supplies and settlers, failed to appear in the area where Junction City was intended to be. The advance party followed the Kansas River downstream until they found the boat stuck on a sandbar at the mouth of the Blue River. Members of the Company conferred with the residents of the settlement at the point, which had been named New Boston. The result was that the newcomers were given one half of the site of New Boston and the name was changed to Manhattan. This action marked the end of the first attempt to establish a town on the present site of Junction City. 	The second attempt to settle the Junction City area was made by Cpt. Millard of the steamboat Hartford, when the steamboat was freed of the load at Manhattan. Millard was able to get as far as the junction of the Republican and Smoky Hill Rivers. A “paper” town named Millard City was formalized on October 3, 1855. The development of a town never happened. 	The third attempt to establish a town was made by some local farmers. They used the name Humboldt and established a “paper” town in the summer of 1857. The development of the town site was also unsuccessful. 	In the fall of 1857, a group of settlers in present day Junction City area again attempted to establish a town. A town company was formed and the name Junction City was given to the site, which was derived from the junction of the Republican and Smoky Hill Rivers. There is evidence that the first work on a permanent building was located near the present intersection of Seventh and Washington Streets in May 1858. By the fall of 1859, Junction City bore some semblance of a busy trading center. 	By 1889, John Hay had prepared a booklet describing Junction City to be distributed to the directors and visitors of the International Exhibition to be held in Paris that year. He referred to Junction City as the “Mid-Continental City of the United States of America.” He also wrote that “at that time there were 12 churches and a flourishing YMCA, which had a seating capacity for 400 people. The schools of the city are substantial and commodious stone structures. The high school was a three-year course at that time. City Hall was arranged with an auditorium capable of seating 650, beautiful scenery and footlights. Several lodges were listed.” Hay described “the streets, avenues, miles of trees, transportation, cemetery and achievements in agriculture. He also pointed out that “A few short years go roamed the buffalo and the almost naked Indian, and where the wigwam dotted the plains and the red man sounded the war-whoop over the plains with pleasure we now present a different picture of our homes, our blocks of substantial business houses, our churches and our institutions of learning as standing out in a grander contrast and showing more wondrous progress than the cities of Europe can boast.” <figure>
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 </figure>“Lincoln Impressed Kansans During Visit”	Gaylynn Childs wrote the following in an article published in the JC Union newspaper on February 12, 1989. This is some of what she wrote. Some firsthand accounts have been recorded about Lincoln’s visit and provide some insight into this leader. The Elwood, Kansas community, which is across the Missouri River from St. Joseph, Missouri was Lincoln’s first stop in Kansas. The Elwood Free Press of December 3, 1859 reported, “Honorable Abraham Lincoln although fatigued with the journey and somewhat ‘under the weather’, kindly consented to make a short speech here. Many citizens assembled at the Great Western Hotel to hear him.”	D.H. Wilder, in a letter written in 1903 to George W. Martin, secretary of the Kansas State Historical Society, recounted this visit. “Judge Delahay and I went to St. Joseph the next morning and way down south to the Hannibal Depot and took Lincoln up town in an omnibus. I took him to the barber shop near the Planter’s Hotel and bought him the New York and Chicago papers at the post office news stand. All of us sat in the dirt waiting for the ferry boat to the Great Western Hotel. That night he spoke in the dining room of the hotel. The meeting was announced by a man going through the streets sounding a gong.”	Albert D. Richards, in his book Field Dungeon and Escape, printed in 1865, gives an account of the next leg of the Lincoln journey. “I went to Troy in Doniphan Count to hear Lincoln. The seeping prairie wind rocked the crazy buildings and cut the faces of travelers like a knife. Mr. Lincoln’s party arrived wrapped in buffalo robes. Not more than forty people assembled in that little bare walled courthouse. In a conversational tone he argued the question of slavery in the territories in the language of an average Ohio or New York farmer. I was unconsciously and irresistibly drawn by the clearness and closeness of his argument. The address lasted an hour and three-quarters. 	In Atchison, Kansas, Franklin G. Adams stated: “I had first seen Mr. Lincoln and hear him talk in Atchison in 1859. He was not well known in Kansas. In Atchison, we appointed a committee to receive him and to provide a place for his address in the evening. He was taken to the Massasoit House Hotel. I was on the committee to provide a place for the Lincoln meeting that evening and the best meeting room in town was in the Methodist Church.” 		The last two speaking appearances of Lincoln’s visit to Kansas were made in Leavenworth. 	The Leavenworth papers speak of his speech there as “being the ablest ever delivered upon the soil of Kansas.”

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