[Excerpt from Dodge City and Ford County, Kansas 1870-1920 Pioneer Histories and Stories. Copyright Ford County Historical Society, Inc. All Rights reserved.]
Just 107 years ago, the community of Wright was chartered by a group of entrepreneurs who looked forward to founding a prosperous town on the old Stage Coach Line stop, seven miles northeast of the county capital, Dodge City.
Today’s industrious little community may have failed to live up to the dreams of William Hunt and his co-founders. Hunt foresaw an agricultural marketplace to rival the county seat with its location on the Santa Fe Railroad, the stage coach stop and cattle yards. Today, the 225 people living in neat brick and frame homes surrounded by well-tended yards and gardens and overlooked by giant grain castles, find their town a “right” place to live and enjoy a secure and independent life-style.
Hunt’s name appears first in a list of five founders of Wright (originally called Ridgeway) listed on the 1887 charter of incorporation. Others were J.D. Hendricks, Ira M. Cobb, John Murphy, and A. McLeod.
The town site is on a 30,000 acre reservation that is Grandview Township, originally part of the Osage Indian Territory. Opened for settlement in 1889, the government withheld 127 acres reserved for Fort Dodge.
Ridgeway was the original name, but railroad workers referred to it as Wright Station, since stockyards located on the Santa Fe line, were owned by Robert Wright, Dodge City mayor and entrepreneur. He drove his cattle regularly across the Arkansas River, dry or flooded, to be shipped from the station.
Hunt, who was born and reared in New Jersey, came west in 1871 and married Sarah Songster, whose family homesteaded in Exeter, Nebraska. They moved with their four children to Ford County, Kansas, in 1886 and built a hotel, which housed the stage coach stop, post office and general store north of the tracks.
Hunt and his partners each put up $200 to form a town company. He also donated land for the first school house located at the junction of U.S. 50 and US 281, and a cemetery on a northwest corner of his homestead, called Pleasant Vale.
Several businesses, two newspapers, and a railroad grain and shipping business thrived, but the Hunts returned to Nebraska in 1899, as the town’s rapid progress slowed during a drought.
By 1905, things were looking up and a new train station was built. Main Street moved south of the tracks and store fronts appeared on one side of the street. A Catholic Church was built in 1909 and a bank in 1915. Three new schools, two large mercantile and grocery establishments soon followed. The post office was moved from the hotel now operated by the Niles Wiseman family to the Adams’ Mercantile south of the tracks. Streets were formed and a number of homes were built by Frank Mueller and sons.
In 1915, a cooperative was formed when a group of farmers, led by Frank (Casey) Jones, owner of a lumberyard and hardware and implement firm, and Ed Brown, a farmer, purchased one of the three small private elevators on the railroad line. A migration of Tipton, Missouri, folks increased the population of the town and community. A number of young men served in World War I, though there were no casualties. In 1917, the flu epidemic hit and the Armistice was signed.
The Co-op elevator burned in 1923, but Manager F.L. Doll and the board had a new and larger elevator ready by harvest the next year. The ’20s were good years for the farm as the advent of automobiles, better roads and new machinery was changing lives.
With the arrival of the Great Depression and Dirty ’30s, people struggled to hold on to their farmland, as it blew away both literally and financially. Little or no grain was harvested for a decade. The bumper crop of 1931 was the last, yet it brought only 25 cents a bushel. Stores closed in Wright, although two grocery stores remained, Sommers and Vogels. A new business, the Lutz Service Station, served new automobile and truck traffic. The F.A. Jones Lumber Co. carried on and a new shop, Conrardy Repair, filled in Main Street. There were several restaurants and a pool hall, but the bank closed.
The early ’40s brought changes and a time of hardship, anxiety and fears as clouds of war settled over the land. Jones retired and the Co-op took over the lumber and hardware business. Crops were good, but work was hard as farmers kept up with wartime demands for food when their sons marched off to war. Fred Birzer, 19, went down in a ship in the Atlantic. Parents and friends worried as the war continued for five years.
Following V-J Day in 1945, Wright had a period of rapid growth. The Co-op built a farm supply store, tripled storage with new elevators and merged with area Co-ops under a new title, Right Coop. Fire destroyed Vogel Grocery and Sommers retired and moved to California. The Co-op built a super market and a tire and battery shop.
Farmland was opened up for a growing population and Wright doubled in size during the 1950s and ’60s as young families employed here built homes. Later other areas were developed as retired couples moved from farms into town. After many years as part of the grocery store scene, a new brick post office was built on Main Street. The street was paved and a sewer system installed for the community.
A new Catholic Church was built in 1965, and school unification saw many rural schools close. For a time Wright retained an elementary school after the parochial school closed and Wright merged with District 443, Dodge City, using the 1929 building for elementary grades until 1993.
A number of young men served in the Armed Services before and during the Vietnam war of the ’60s and ’70s and in 1970, two servicemen died, Richard Conrardy and Gregg Steimel, both 19.
During these years, social clubs, church groups, an extension unit, bowling leagues, baseball and softball teams and tournaments, and a recreation and 4-H program were formed as young families thrived. Lights on the baseball field burned until midnight as men and women, youth, and boys and girls vied in a sport in which Wright was often the area champion.
The grocery store closed as times began to change again. A.A. Schmidt, a retired farmer, purchased the building and for a number of years, the Wright Steak House was famous in the area. Today, the building houses a comfortable spot for senior citizen dinners and activities.
The year of the Centennial, 1987. brought over 2,000 people to Wright, on June 5, almost 10 times the normal population. A parade led by the famed Warner Ranch family, pioneers on the Sawlog, riding their black Morgans, wound through the streets on a bright and sunny day. Games and contests, a Main Street barbecue and dance, a Museum-for-a-Day, and other events provided a time of reminiscing and celebration to the community.
Descendants of William and Sarah Hunt arrived to visit “Grandpa’s Town,” from Nebraska, and expressed satisfaction and a feeling that he would have approved.
Evelyn Steimel
from The Wright Centennial Book, 1987
Dodge City and Ford County, Kansas 1870-1920 Pioneer Histories and Stories is available for purchase from the Ford County Historical Society.