Freed families built this Kansas town in 1877, and descendants still return every July

It’s the only one left west of the Mississippi

Freed families founded Nicodemus, Kansas, in 1877, looking for land and a fresh start after the Civil War.

Today it sits along U.S. Highway 24 in the northwest corner of the state, the oldest and only surviving Black settlement west of the Mississippi River.

The National Park Service runs it as a National Historic Site. Five historic buildings still stand.

A small community still lives here.

And every July, descendants come home for a celebration that goes back to the town’s very first year.

Six founders and a string of dugouts on the riverbank

Six Black founders and one white land agent started the Nicodemus Town Company in 1877. The first settlers came up from Kentucky and carved dugouts into the riverbank for shelter.

Within two years, somewhere between 500 and 700 people had followed from Kentucky, Tennessee and Mississippi. They named the town after a legendary figure who bought his own freedom from slavery.

When the railroad bypassed Nicodemus in the late 1880s, many packed up and left. The ones who stayed held on.

Pick up a tour map inside the Township Hall

Your visit starts at the Township Hall, which doubles as the visitor center and one of the five historic buildings on site. Workers built it in 1939 from local limestone through a Depression-era work program.

Inside you’ll find exhibits, an information desk and park rangers who can help you plan your route. Short films walk you through how the town rose, grew and shrank over the decades.

The hall once held dances, live music, theater and even roller skating nights.

Five buildings tell the whole story of the town

Each of the five historic buildings stands for a pillar of the community: church, self-government, education, home and business.

You can pick up a walking tour brochure at the visitor center or ask a ranger to take you around. The buildings became a unit of the National Park System in Nov. 1996.

Most interiors stay closed, so the tour keeps you outside, reading the walls and hearing the stories behind them. The whole loop covers a short stretch you can walk or drive.

The hotel that doubled as a post office and school

The St. Francis Hotel is a stone building that carried more weight than its name suggests. Zachary and Jenny Fletcher, early settlers, made it their home.

It also served as the town’s first post office, first schoolhouse and a stagecoach stop. Look at the western wall and you can still see original limestone bricks hauled in from Stockton, Kansas.

The Switzer family moved in during the 1920s, which is how the building picked up a second name over the years.

A congregation that started underground in 1877

The First Baptist Church got its start in a dugout the same year the town did. As more families arrived, the dugout gave way to a sod church, then a small stone one.

The building you see today dates to 1907. A newer brick church next door still holds services every Sunday, keeping the thread going from those earliest days.

Few things in Nicodemus connect the past to the present as directly as this congregation and the ground it has held since the beginning.

Step inside the restored AME Church

Most buildings on the tour keep you outside, but the African Methodist Episcopal Church is one of two interiors you can actually enter. The AME congregation started in 1878, just a year after the town’s founding.

The present building came from another church in 1910. A full restoration wrapped up in 2021, and the space looks sharp.

Check the official schedule before you visit, because hours shift with the season. This is your best chance to stand inside one of the original structures.

The county’s very first school started in a dugout

Education mattered to the settlers from the start. The first lessons took place in the Fletchers’ dugout, well before any real schoolhouse existed.

Residents formed School District Number 1 in 1879, making it the first school in the entire county. A formal building went up in 1887 but fire took it.

The one you see today dates to 1918.

It sits quietly on the plains now, but it stands for something the founders refused to wait on, even when they had almost nothing.

Limestone walls and roller skating on a Friday night

The Township Hall pulled double duty from the day it opened. Local government met here, but so did everyone else.

Families packed the hall for dances, plays and live music.

The limestone walls have held since 1939, and the building still serves as the first stop for every visitor who walks through the door today.

A small town with limited means built its own center of public life, and that center never moved. You start your visit in the same room where the community started theirs.

Church, school, home, business and self-government

The five buildings aren’t just old structures on a walking tour. Each one represents a pillar the community built itself around.

The churches gave settlers a place to gather and hold on. Self-government let them run their own affairs at a time when that kind of freedom was rare.

The school and the Fletcher home anchored family life. The hotel and its many uses gave the town a way to grow and support itself.

Together, the five pillars tell one story.

Descendants still live here and the land is privately owned

Nicodemus is not a ghost town. Descendants of the original founders still live in and around the community, and much of the land is privately owned. You’ll want to stay respectful of that as you walk the site.

The land itself sits on the ancestral territory of the Pawnee people. Out on the open plains, the quiet hits you in a way that photos can’t capture.

This is a real, working place where people live, not a museum frozen behind glass.

Every July the town fills up for a celebration dating to 1878

If you can time your visit for July, you’ll land in the middle of the Homecoming Emancipation Celebration.

Descendants travel from across the country to come back, and the town’s population swells to several hundred for the weekend. Expect speeches, live bands, games, sports and shared food spread across tables.

The tradition has run since 1878, making it nearly as old as the town itself. Nothing else gives you a better window into what Nicodemus was, and what it still is.

Visit Nicodemus National Historic Site in Kansas

You’ll find Nicodemus National Historic Site at 304 Washington Ave. in Nicodemus, Kansas, just south of the roadside park off U.S. Highway 24.

The Roadside Park stays open daily at all hours, but visitor center hours and ranger tour schedules change with the season, so check the official NPS site before you go.

You can enter the AME Church and the visitor center inside the Township Hall. Bring your own water and snacks.

There are no restaurants, gas stations or stores within the site.

This article was created with AI assistance and human editing.

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