Syracuse, KS

Syracuse is Hamilton County's seat, a U.S. 50 city set just north of the Arkansas River and a few miles from Colorado. The Santa Fe Railway reached the county in the early 1870s, and the stop that became Syracuse helped turn a trail-and-ranch landscape into a county center. The county-seat fight was real: Syracuse won the 1886 election, survived a challenge from Kendall, and was confirmed by the Kansas Supreme Court in 1888. A year later, Syracuse also elected the nation's first all-woman city council after Kansas allowed women to vote in municipal elections. This is southwest Kansas with courthouse business, railroad history, and a river just south of town.