Leoti, KS

Leoti is the Wichita County seat in western Kansas, founded in 1885 by a group from Garden City. The 2020 census counted 1,475 residents. Two years after its founding, Leoti became part of a violent contest with neighboring Coronado over which town would hold the county seat. The 1887 fight left deaths and injuries, giving Leoti a western history much sharper than its small population suggests. Today the city sits in a broad, semi-arid landscape about 25 miles from Scott City and along the orbit of the Western Vistas Historic Byway.

The Museum of the Great Plains holds local collections ranging from an old general store and military displays to fossils, saddles, quilts, and an Old Town Leoti. The Washington Ames House adds a preserved house to the city’s historic map, while the county seat brings government offices into the same small grid. Leoti’s dry air and low light pollution also make Wichita County a place for looking at stars. It is a county-seat town where frontier conflict, museum rooms, open prairie, and very dark night skies all sit together.