Silk in Kansas

The newest issue of Lawrence Magazine features my story on Silkville, a utopian community determined to raise silk worms and produce silk on the Kansas prairie in the late 1800s. The community failed, and the silk ranch is now a more-typical-for-Kansas cattle ranch. Some of their buildings are still standing, though, and I found the whole saga fascinating.

The road to Silkville is desolate today. Imagine what it must have been like in the late 1800s.

Of the Silkville buildings that remain on the ranch today, several are used as barns and shops. Fire destroyed most of the huge building that housed Silkville’s families–called “the chateau” by neighbors–but it was rebuilt in part and is still in use as a farmhouse. Only the schoolhouse is empty, sitting on a corner of land a mile or so away from the main collection of buildings.