Belmont Post Office
Contributed and transcribed by Cousin Don Henkle.
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			History of Belmont Post Office
 
	From records in Topeka, Kansas, we learned Belmont was the first 
settlement and the first county seat in Woodson County, Kansas. We have 
several different reports about Belmont. The town was built along the wagon 
trail known as the "Humboldt-Eureka Road", that was first used in 1857. 
A part of the old trail can still be traced east and south of the crossroads 
known as Belmont Corner.
  	Belmont was an important and thriving place during the vears 1857 
to 1865. Stages arrived here to stop where a log hotel served the passengers. 
It was a mainstop between Humboldt and Eureka on this stage line, and was 
also a stopping place for freighters. In its heyday, Belmont had a general 
store, post office, hotel, Stage barn, blacksmith shop, tavern and an Indian 
Agency. The town boasted of six hundred inhabitants in the early years. 
Belmont is probably one of the most controversial ghost towns in Kansas. 
One reason for this is that neither the fort or the town had a very long 
span of life. The town possibly ten years and the fort, less. Another reason 
was the fact that it prospered during an early period in the history of 
Kansas. From a page of F. Pomeroy's Diary of Monday, 10 February 1862 we 
have this information:

 	"Last night five of our men deserted. This morning Lieut. Hughs, 
with ten men was sent in one direction in search of them and Sgt. Thomas 
went west with nine men. 
	 I was one of them. We traveled over a prairie eighteen miles without
a house, and at one p.m. reached Belmont, a village of about twenty log 
houses, mostly deserted, where we got dinner, then marched twelve miles 
south to Fort Roe, on the Verdigris river. There was a camp of six thousand 
Indians there."
	   The actual founder of Belmont has been accredited to Joel
 Moody. A plat of the town was later made but never recorded with the 
Register of Deeds of Woodson County. Several lots were sold in the 
transactions. This was followed by the establishment of a post office 
on 21 September 1857 with John W. Lowe as postmaster.
	 From the Archives at the Kansas State Historical Society in Topeka, 
Kansas: Belmont named as County seat in Sec. 13 of Bill 203, 1858. Townsite 
located 1857-58. Named for Belmont ounty, Ohio.