This post is the first in a series on Garden City, Kansas, highlighting the genealogical riches that can be found in the National Register of Historic Places. The J.H. Stevens-C.L. Thompson Block Historic District was listed in the NRHP on June 17, 2024.[1]  The historic significance of the district was researched and written by the author.

John A. Stevens was born December 22, 1850, in Warren County, Illinois.  In the early 1870s, he arrived in Sterling, Kansas, after making his way through Iowa, then Republic County, Kansas.  Stevens earned a name for himself by hunting buffalo and rounding up wild horses that roamed the western prairies.  When brothers William and James Fulton arrived in Sterling, they met Stevens, and the three went on to found Garden City. 

Within the first year the town began to take shape.  But the growth would be short lived due to the lack of rainfall.   Many of the early settlers left for greener pastures in Oklahoma Territory or farther west, but stalwart men devised a method for harnessing the nearby Arkansas River; they began to dig canals.  During the 1880s more than four hundred miles of canals valued at $3M were dug around Garden City and by 1883, Garden City was incorporated as a city of the third class.^[2] 

Stevens wed William Fulton’s daughter, Sadie “Ciddie” Annette Fulton, on February 10, 1879, the first marriage ceremony performed in Finney County.  Stevens and his father-in-law founded a livery business, the first in town.  In 1882, he homesteaded the northwest quarter of the original plat of the town, known as the Stevens’ addition.[3]  He planted fruit and other hardwood trees brought in from Colorado along city streets and on his farm located just outside the city.  He sold lots in his addition throughout the decade and donated land for the city park that still bears his name.

John A. Stevens was an integral part of the town’s growth.  In 1884 he was portrayed in the Gray County Sentinel,[4]  by a newspaper man making the rounds in the county.  Of Stevens the writer said, “As the owner of 160 acres of city property…he is hard at work all the time, planting trees along the streets, building and adorning in every way, and always read to bear his full share of the burdens.”[5]. It was in this article that Stevens was called, “a young man, but an old settler [emphasis original].”

Stevens served as one of the first city councilmen, on the school board, a city constable, and as city marshal.  The first organized school was held in his home in 1879.  Stevens bought his father-in-law out of the livery business and continued to run the stable and farm in the first half of the 1880s.  But his longest standing achievement remains the development of the west side of the 400 block of N. Main Street, located in Stevens’ Second Addition on his quarter section in the original townsite.  Stevens’ building at 405-407 N. Main and the Stevens Opera House were both completed in 1886 followed by the Windsor Hotel in 1888.  When his hotel was finished it was called the “Waldorf of the Prairies” and was the largest hotel between Denver and Kansas City, noted for fine dining.  Stevens lost the hotel and opera house in 1893, but he continued to live and farm in Garden City until his death in 1902.  In an 1888 sketch in the local paper declared Stevens had invested more money in the city than any other resident. “No man has worked harder, built stronger or accomplished more that John A. Stevens.”[6]  Upon his death at age fifty-one, the local newspaper said of him, “Garden City never had a more enterprising and progressive citizen.” ^[7]

This short biography illustrates the value of a nomination to the National Register of Historic Places.  While John A. Stevens might not be a family member, the nomination includes a brief history of the town, many names of pioneers and later residents, and a detailed description of the businesses and buildings.  As a genealogist and historical researcher, I can assure you it is worth your time to learn more about your ancestor’s hometown.  You might be surprised to find them detailed in the NRHP.

[1] The nomination to the National Register of Historic Places can be found at https://khri.kansasgis.org/.

[2] James Tomayko. “The Ditch Irrigation Boom in. Southwest Kansas: Changing an Environment.” Journal of the West 22 (1983):20-25, as quoted in Miner, West of Wichita, 179.

[3] Gray County Sentinel (Cimarron, KS) 1 Jun 1884, 7.

[4] Gray County Sentinel (Cimarron, KS) 1 Jun 1884, 7.

[5] Ibid.

[6] Ibid.

[7] Garden City Herald. 12 Apr 1902, 4.