Claflin, an incorporated city of Barton county, is located in Independent township, about 20 miles northeast of Great Bend, the county seat. The first settlement at Claflin was made in 1887, and in 1910 the city reported a population of 554. It is a station on the Missouri Pacific R. R., has 2 banks, a flour mill, a creamery, a grain elevator, a machine shop, a weekly newspaper (the Clarion), Catholic and Protestant churches, a good public school system, and is the principal shipping and supply point for a large agricultural district, to the people of which its international money order postoffice supplies mail daily by two rural routes. The Odin school, a Catholic institution, is located at Claflin.