Conway Springs, KS

Conway Springs is a Sumner County city whose name gives away the local landmark: a mineral spring that once supplied bottled water and now sits beneath a spring pavilion in the park at the center of town. The water feature is the detail that makes Conway Springs different from a generic prairie grid. Its name combines Conway Township with the spring, and the town's early identity also came from rail: a 1912 account places the community at a junction of two Missouri Pacific lines, fifteen miles northwest of Wellington. The pavilion and the old railroad pattern show why this place exists where it does.

The city is still tied to the surrounding farm country through Conway Springs USD 356, the local public school district. Routes lead toward Wellington and the rest of Sumner County, while the central park keeps the spring story in the middle of town instead of leaving it to a plaque or a name on a map. Conway Springs is the local scoop in miniature: bottled-water history, a railroad junction, and a school-centered city gathered around one old mineral spring.