Beersheba

Ravanna and Eminence fought over the seat of Garfield County, created by the legislature on March 23, 1887. Bat Masterson and twenty Dodge City deputies kept the peace at the vote, and Ravanna won by 35 votes. Eminence charged that 60 ballots had been cast in the names of crewmen building Ravanna's courthouse, and in 1889 the Kansas Supreme Court moved the seat to Eminence. Ravanna's surveyors found the county smaller than the required 432 square miles. The court agreed, and on March 18, 1893, Garfield was annexed to Finney County. Brick pillars of Ravanna's never-used courthouse remain.

What the plaque says

Beersheba In 1882 the first Jewish agricultural colony in Kansas was established when some 60 recently arrived Jewish immigrants from Russia, sponsored by the Hebrew Union Agricultural Society, settled northeast of here along Pawnee Creek. Named for the ancient city of Beersheba, the colony stretched over several sections of land, each family homesteading 160 acres. Dugouts and sod houses were constructed for homes, a synagogue, and school. Cow chips were used for fuel. Wells were dug and the native prairie was plowed and planted. Within the first few months, a wedding took place, a baby was born, and the first death occurred. Farming proved to be unprofitable and severe winters produced hardships. To supplement their meager incomes, colonists sold their equipment and livestock, took jobs with the railroad, mortgaged their land, and established businesses in nearby Ravanna and Eminence. As the two towns died out in the 1890s after a bitter county seat battle lost by both towns, the colonists sold or abandoned their homesteads. A decade after the colony was established, none of the colonists remained and the land reverted to prairie. Erected by Kansas Historical Society and Kansas Department of Transportation

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Lee Richardson Zoo — 23 mi
  Garden City's zoo in Finnup Park, begun in 1927 with two skunks and now accredited, free to walk in and open to cars on a drive-through loop for a vehicle fee.
• Santa Fe Trail Ruts west of Dodge City — 23 mi
  Two miles of wagon swales up to 400 feet wide on a grass hillside above the Arkansas, nine miles west of Dodge City, a National Historic Landmark seen from a pull-off on US-50.
• Sandsage Bison Range and Wildlife Area — 24 mi
  The 3,760-acre remnant of the Kansas National Forest south of Garden City, where federal tree planting failed and the state's oldest publicly owned bison herd now grazes sand sage prairie.
• Boot Hill Museum — 32 mi
  Dodge City's museum on the site of the original Boot Hill cemetery, a 1950s replica of Front Street built around a collection one family began gathering in the 1870s.

More markers nearby

• The Santa Fe Trail — 19 mi
• American Indians and the Buffalo — 22 mi
• Dodge City: Cowboy Capital — 31 mi