Highway 24-18 Junction Orientation

Highway 24-18 Junction Orientation

NPS Photo/Daniel Cox

Nicodemus National Historic Site lies four miles east of here. Former enslaved African Americans from Kentucky, Tennessee, and Mississippi established Nicodemus in 1877. They left the effects of Jim Crow in the South to homestead in western Kansas. Established at the end of Reconstruction, Nicodemus is the oldest and only remaining all-black town west of the Mississippi. Town organizers solicited large groups to settle the site and homestead within the 4x7 mile Nicodemus township (see map). At its peak, the population reached nearly 650 residents, but steadily declined after the Missouri Pacific Railroad bypassed Nicodemus in 1887. South of here, the town of Bogue became the railroad hub. This caused several businesses to relocate there, which weakened Nicodemus’s economic foundation and potential growth. Nearly a century later in 1976, the Department of the Interior designated the town a Historic Landmark District. In 1996, an act of Congress established Nicodemus National Historic Site, a unit of the National Park Service.