St. John, KS

St. John is Stafford County’s seat in central Kansas, with 1,228 residents in the 2020 census. The city square, courthouse, Brown Memorial Park, and the Church on the Hill form the clearest civic map. Around them, ranching, wheat, corn, milo, soybeans, oil production, and shelter-belted fields shape the wider Stafford County landscape. St. John also sits on the Wetlands and Wildlife National Scenic Byway, tying the county-seat streets to the prairie and agricultural country around them.

The settlement began in 1875 as Zion Valley, a religious colony founded by William Bickerton of the Church of Jesus Christ. Its first building was a small white church on a hill, remembered locally as the Mormon Temple. In 1879 the town company renamed the place St. John after Governor John P. St. John, and the community later won the county-seat contest. St. John–Hudson USD 350 and St. John–Hudson High School keep the town’s school life tied to the county-seat center. The result is a Kansas town where a religious colony, a courthouse square, and working farm country meet.