Westmoreland, KS

Westmoreland is Pottawatomie County’s seat, a Kansas city whose early map was shaped by the Oregon Trail, Rock Creek, and a spring that gave travelers water. John McKimens established the first post office in 1858 and named it for Westmoreland County, Pennsylvania. A log schoolhouse followed in 1862, then a sawmill on Rock Creek and a general store as the town plat took shape in 1871. The county-seat contest was hard-fought, and Westmoreland eventually housed county offices in churches and the Detro House Hotel before a courthouse could be built.

That limestone courthouse, later replaced as the county’s working justice center, still stands at Main and Second streets with a memorial on its grounds. Rock Creek USD 323 now serves the area, with Westmoreland Elementary in town and the junior-senior high school between Westmoreland and St. George. The city remains small, but its history has a clear sequence: wagon road, spring, post office, school, mill, courthouse, and the farm roads that carry the county together. Westmoreland is a county seat whose civic role grew out of a travel stop on the prairie.