Galena, KS

Galena is a Cherokee County city whose name is literally a piece of the old mining story: galena is lead ore. The railroad reached the area in 1871, lead was found in 1877, and the town grew as part of the Tri-State Mining District. Galena was first laid out as Cornwall, briefly went by Short Creek and Bonanza, then settled on the mineral name. The mining legacy is complicated. Historic lead and zinc work put Cherokee County on the EPA's Superfund list, so Galena's story includes both the boom that built the place and the long cleanup that followed. It is southeast Kansas in ore-country form, with the town name refusing to let the geology fade.