Ellis, KS

Ellis is a western Kansas city built around a railroad water stop. Kansas Pacific built the station in 1867, the post office followed in 1870, and the railroad laid out the town with a depot, crew hotel, and locomotive and car shops in 1873. By 1888, Ellis was incorporated, and it later became a division point between Union Pacific’s Kansas and Colorado divisions. The 2020 census counted 1,958 residents. I-70 now carries most through traffic, with Hays 13 miles east, but the rail-era shape still gives Ellis its personality.

The Ellis Railroad Museum keeps the railroad story close, while the Chrysler Boyhood Home and Museum adds a very different local claim to fame. Ellis USD 388 serves the community, and St. Mary Grade School gives the city another long-running institution. The Smoky Hill River runs through the wider landscape, connecting Ellis to the dry prairie and the westward routes that made the railroad valuable in the first place. Today, people may know Ellis as an I-70 stop west of Hays, but the town’s real shorthand is more specific: water station, division point, immigrant settlement, railroad shops, and the boyhood home of an automotive pioneer.