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Kansas Counties

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Kansas Counties

Kansas has 105 counties, the sixth-highest total of any state. No Kansas county has two words in its name. Wyandotte County and the city of Kansas City operate as a unified government, and Greeley County and the city of Tribune are in the process of converting to a similar system.

Brown County, Kansas

Brown County History, Geography, Demographics, Cities and Towns, and Education

County Seat: Hiawatha
Year Organized: 1855
Square Miles: 672

Court House:

601 Oregon Street
County Courthouse
Hiawatha, KS 66434-2241

Etymology - Origin of County Name

After Albert G. Browne, of Mississippi, who had been Senator and member of the House of Representatives from that state, was United States Senator at the date of the Act organizing Kansas Territory, was re-elected for six years in 1859, but withdrew with Jefferson Davis on the secession of the Southern states. The name is properly spelled with an e in the original statute, but on the county seal the e was left off--accidently, probably. All later statues present the name without the final e.

Demographics:

County QuickFacts: Census Bureau Quick Facts

County History

Atchison county; thence north to the northwest corner of Atchison county; thence east with said north line of Atchison county to the southwest corner of Doniphan county; thence north with said west line of Doniphan county to the place of beginning."

In all the places where the name appears in the act of 1855 it is spelled "Browne." It was named for Albert G. Brown, United States senate from Mississippi, who spelled his name without the final "e." Dr. J. H. Stringfellow, a member of the Kansas legislature of 1855, stated that the county was named after O. H. Browne, a member of the house from the Third representative district, but the final "e" was dropped in the spelling of the name, by subsequent legislatures.

Brown county is bounded on the north by the State of Nebraska; on the east by Doniphan county; on the south by Atchison and Jackson, and on the west by Nemaha county. It has an area of 576 square miles.

Geography

The surface of the county is gently undulating. The creek bottoms average about half a mile in width and all the streams are fringed with belts of timber, the principal varieties being oak, walnut, honey-locust, hackberry, sycamore, elm, box-elder and basswood. Limestone is abundant and sandstone of a good quality is found, both of which are quarried for local use. Two mineral springs in the western part of the county are claimed to have medicinal properties. Brown is one of the leading agricultural counties, corn, winter wheat and oats being the largest crops. It is also a good horticultural region, and there are over 200,000 fruit trees of bearing age.

According to Morrill's History of Brown County, one of the overland routes, the "California Trail," (q. v.) "wound along the divides passing Drummond's Branch, crossed the western part of the present site of Hiawatha, followed the divide between the head waters of Wolf and Walnut, and left the county near the present site of Sabetha."

Neighboring Counties:

East: Doniphan County
Southeast: Atchison County
Southwest: Jackson County
West: Nemaha County
Northwest: Richardson County, Neb.

Cities and Towns:

- Everest	city	Incorporated Area
- Fairview	city	Incorporated Area
- Hamlin	city	Incorporated Area
- Hiawatha (County Seat)	city	Incorporated Area
- Horton	city	Incorporated Area
- Irving	township
- Leona	city	Incorporated Area
- Morrill	city	Incorporated Area
- Padonia	township
- Powhattan	city	Incorporated Area
- Reserve	city	Incorporated Area
- Robinson	city	Incorporated Area
- Willis	city	Incorporated Area

County Resources:

Brown County - KS-Cyclopedia - 1912

County Resources

The history of our nation was a prolonged struggle to define the relative roles and powers of our governments: federal, state, and local. And the names given the counties, our most locally based jurisdictions, reflects the "characteristic features of this country!"

But age, size and colorful names of our counties isn't the only reason to explore counties' role in American history, or the history of county government itself. In fact, the story of county government reflects the larger meanings of American history.

Today's counties are the most flexible, locally responsive and creative governments in the US. They are the most diverse, varying in size, population, geography, and governmental structure. In their politics and policies, they express a 1990's political slogan "Think globally, act locally."