Lindsborg Downtown Historic Survey

Preservation Services and Technology Group, LLC; Roger, Fred; Payne, R.

From introduction and part 1: "In August, 2011, Preservation Services and Technology Group (PSATG) performed an architectural survey and evaluation of historic resources in downtown Lindsborg, KS. The purpose of the project was to perform an intensive-level survey of all historic resources within the study area. In so doing, all of the data was entered into the Kansas Historic Resource Inventory database (KHRI). Upon completion of the survey and database entry, this report document was created to provide details about the findings. The project concluded with a public meeting. Lindsborg is located in McPherson County, Kansas along the valley of the Smoky Hill River, one of the state's major tributaries. When European explorer Francisco Vasquez de Coronado came to the region he called "Quivira" in 1541, the place was settled by Little River Wichita Indians. The Wichitas lived in grass hut villages, supplementing farming with bison hunting. By the eighteenth century, other tribes, including the Comanches, Kiowas and Kiowa Apaches, had pushed the Wichitas south and west. During the early nineteenth century, the Santa Fe Trail, which bisected what would become McPherson County, became an established trade route between American states and territories and the Spanish Southwest. In McPherson County, the Kansa Indians signed a treaty with the federal government to permit the trails to cross their land. When the Kansas-Nebraska Act of 1854 opened the Kansas Territory to permanent white settlement, new settlers poured into its eastern reaches. Although McPherson County's first white settler, Isaac Sharp, arrived in 1860, settlement of the state's central and western regions did not begin in earnest until the late 1860s and early 1870s, when railroads began selling trust lands." Project funding was provided in part by a 2011 Historic Preservation Fund grant to the Lindsborg Chamber of Congress (project number KS-11-005) administered by the Kansas State Historic Preservation Office (grant number 20-11-31923) administered by the State, Tribal, and Local Plans and Grants Division, National Park Service, U.S. Department of the Interior.

Lindsborg Downtown Historic Survey

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