Perry, KS

Perry is a Jefferson County city that sits between Perry Lake to the north and the Kansas River to the south. The town got its start in 1865 after the railroad came through, and its small grid still reads as a rail-era place rather than a county seat or a lake resort. Perry Lake is about three miles north, the river is about a mile south, and Topeka and Lawrence are the larger reference points in either direction.

The school map is regional too. Perry and Lecompton schools joined to form Perry-Lecompton USD 343 in 1970, linking the two communities across the rural Jefferson County landscape. Water gives Perry its strongest local hook, but the town’s identity is really the combination of rail beginning, lake country, river bottom, and school district. If you are driving through, think of Perry as the small community between two very different kinds of water: a managed lake and the Kansas River, with the road grid and school system tying the pieces together.