From June 1885 through the end of the year, the town site was transformed into a town. By January 1886, an enterprising lumberman reported having sold over a million feet of lumber -- most of which went into erecting the score of businesses slapped up nearly overnight on the new main drag of Broadway. In Brainerd's first official week of existence, 17 buildings were erected (including two restaurants to feed the newly arrived hordes) and 150 lots were sold, mostly to the North and East of the railroad right-of-way.

The new railroad, known locally as "The Daisy," arrived on June 28, 1885, along with a quickly assembled depot, side track, switches, telegraph and stockyard pens. The line immediately began hog and cattle shipments, and the new passenger train was such a hit that by July 4, a day-trip rail excursion to nearby Newton netted 58 ticket purchasers. The railroad (soon absorbed into the expanding Missouri Pacific system) was central to the original town layout, bisecting the square town plat in an orthogonal fashion as it made its way to the Northwest from El Dorado to Newton.

Local resident Johann Janzen later recalled that new houses were sprouting "like mushrooms out of the ground," but that housing was in such short supply in the town's first several months that dwellings were renting for as much as $18 a week -- a wildly inflated price when one considers that land was then selling for roughly $15 an acre.

A new weekly newspaper, The Brainerd Sun, begain documenting the boomtown's growth with its first edition on July 15, 1885. In September, the paper noted that Brainerd contained 180 buildings and 500 inhabitants. The town's 43 reported businesses (24 of them run by bachelors) included: several lumberyards, a hardware store, pharmacy & sundries shop, meat market, furniture store, shoe and boot store, flour and feed store, barber shop, ice cream and confectionary, photo studio, harness and saddlery, loan and insurance agent, tin and repair shop, music store, livery, blacksmith shop, boarding house, hotel and several restaurants. Many of these businesses and their operators relocated from nearby Plum Grove, as that town's once-grand fortunes were dimmed. Several saloons and billard halls also cropped up in Brainerd to cater to the restless young carpenters, tradesmen and fortune-seekers who showed up on the town's muddy streets on a daily basis.

A giddy sense of optimism was in the air, particularly in the pages of the boosterish local paper, which crowed sardonically about the "palatial residence" of its editor, Austin Brumback, in an October 15, 1885 editorial. "It is built in the Sitting Bull style, a part of it being weather-boarded crosswise, and part of it up and down with a ventilator between each board," said the tongue-in-cheek editorial. "In front is an elegant bunch of shingles that serve in place of a doorstep. The parlor, sitting room and sleeping apartments are condensed so as to occupy one room 12 x 14, but can easily be enlarged by kicking the weather boarding off one side of the house."

Despite the town's ramshackle, flim-flam appearance, signs of permanence were taking root left and right. The Sun reported on the construction of a new church and issued calls for a literary society, singing classes and a skating rink. And a new grade school held its first classes with 50 pupils in the room of a Broadway building in the fall. By November, the elegant, stone, two-story Bank of Brainerd building was completed at the corner of Broadway and Harder Street, lending stability to the expanding frontier community.

On November 14, 1885, Brainerd was officially incorporated as a city of the third class. A mayor, police judge, city clerk, marshall and five city councilmen were elected. All of this activity prompted a local scribe to pen a poetic ode to the town, entitled, "Brainerd," which closed with the prophetic lines: "Someone said that Brainerd was dead/But I'd like for him to know/That Brainerd is alive and on the move/And still continues to grow."

The forecast proved accurate, at least for the next three years, as the town made the successful transition from boomtown to established community. Signs of permanence abounded, from the formation of two local baseball teams (the "Paper Collars" and "Horner's Toughs") and construction of the Odd Fellows and Masonic lodges, to the 1886 completion of a two-story stone schoolhouse with capacity for 160 students just East of the city limits. Community events included annual visits by touring circuses and Memorial Day celebrations, featuring a Grand Army of the Republic parade, basket dinner and concert by the Brainerd Glee Club and Brainerd Brass Band.

By 1888, Polk's Kansas State Gazetteer and Business Directory confirmed the fact that Brainerd had arrived as a bonafide city worthy of mention in this see-and-be-seen state guidebook. The Gazetteer listed the town's population as 450 and made note of the comunity's Methodist and Presbyterian churches, school, bank, two hotels, many other businesses and "live weekly newspaper, The Ensign."

A recently discovered city ledger book containing the town's ordinances and council meeting minutes provides insight into the mindset of the town's governing founding father. Like the town's newspaper, the council seemed determined to promote a progress agenda of order and cleanliness at all costs. From 1885 to 1889, the council passed 13 ordinances mandating construction and repair of stone and wood sidewalks. Other ordinances legislated against unkempt, weedy lots, garbage and refuse in streets and alleys and "the running at large of animals within the city limits." Peddlers, circuses, minstrel shows, "street fakirs, hawkers and traveling auctioneers" were required to be licensed by the city or face a whopping $50 fine. Strict fines also were imposed for violators of the ordinance prohibiting the "carrying of concealed deadly weapons."

Brainerd was taking a cue from the Kansas cowtowns of Dodge City, Abilene, Newton and Wichita -- which cropped up along the Atchison, Topeka & Santa Fe railroad line as it built its way West from Kansas City in the 1870s. The infamous cowtowns quickly made the transition from lawless frontier towns to law-abiding communities by enforcing certain Victorian standards of behavior and appearance.

By February 1889, The Brainerd Ensign, could lay claim to "Two church organizations, a harmonious class of people, one of the best grain markets, a two-story stone school building, several stone masons, carpenters and plasterers", but only "one calaboose, 'occupied twice in four years.'"

A wholesome, prosperous American town had been firmly established on the Kansas Prairie. Its development was swift and sure. But its decline was even swifter.