Lushton then and now 2

In addition to the photograph of George’s filling station (which no one seems to remember) and the bank (here), the Lushton Centennial book contains other treasures, including an 1889 plat map of the town.

Lushton spring to life in 1887 when the Kansas City & Omaha railroad laid tracks to connect Sutton and McCool Junction and built a depot roughly halfway between, on the site of Lushton. Already in 1889 a number of businesses and public buildings lined Lushton’s well laid out streets (for a larger and higher-resolution version of the plat map below, see here).

• The depot, of course, is situated between the main rail line on the south and the rail siding on the north. (Were there two sets of tracks in the 1960s?)


• The elevator was located then where it has always been and remains even today.


• In the southwest corner of block 12 one sees a building identified as a bank, with another building just to the north—perhaps the building that later became George’s filling station (or Wayne Harrington’s trucking company)?


• The map identifies two buildings as hotels in the block south of the bank, although it may be that both labels apply to a single place of business.


• The black rectangle in the southeast corner of block 32 is the U.B. (United Brethren) church. This church building had been located across the road north of the Lushton cemetery but was moved into town in 1888, where it remained until it burned in May 1943.


• The stock pens where farmers brought their livestock for transport to Omaha or some other stockyard were located west and slightly north of the depot, but what was the long building just east of the stock pens?


• The town plan included forty-one or forty-two full blocks (depending on how you count). Did the town ever fill the platted area, or were some of the streets and blocks to the west planned but never established?


• Grandpa and Grandma’s Lushton house was located in the northeast corner of block 11, unless I am mistaken.

Much has changed in the 125 years from when the plat map was drawn until now (see below). Some of the streets from 1889 still remain: Gilbert (main), Phillip, Henderson, and First through Fifth. The train tracks that gave birth to the town are gone, but some buildings and houses remain. Of course, the memories will likely outlast them all.