Whitewater Got the Railroad, Brainerd Got the Shaft

Brainerd's death knell was sounded as early as 1887, when the Rock Island Railroad announced plans to build a major North-South line connecting Peabody and Wichita three miles West of town. Despite the repeated attempts of local businessmen to get the line routed through Brainerd, the Rock Island opted to cross the tracks of the Missouri Pacific at the Butler/Harvey county line. Here, a new town was founded in 1888 and christened Whitewater, after the narrow river which ran west of the town site.

History quickly began to repeat itself, as merchants announced plans to relocate their businesses to Whitewater as quickly as they had abandoned other once-flourishing Butler County towns such as Plum Grove and Potwin. The July 25, 1889, issue of the Whitewater Tribune reported: "Brainerd is on the verge of moving to the crossing of the MO.P. and Rock Island Railroads, three miles west of this point. It is true that two buildings have been taken from here; one an old billard hall that has not been occupied since the fall of '85. The other, a black smith shop which was purchased by one who was offered inducements to do so by parties interested in the neighboring village."

On June 27, 1889, the Whitewater correspondent for the Potwin Messenger reported that 18 buildings were readying for the move to Whitewater. "We find in that number Horace McLain, with bank and livery barn; Roach Brothers, G.W. Neal, lumber yard, and others. Most of the buildings from Brainerd are store rooms; every lot on Main Street was sold and staked off this week," stated the article. "Lumber on several lots ready for building."

The rush to abandon ship in search of rosier climes was exemplified by the story of a local farmer who alledgedly stopped the Bank of Brainerd in transit on a wagon from Brainerd to Whitewater to make a deposit after selling his hogs.

As the Whitewater Tribune claimed, in a June 27, 1889, issue, "The Brainerdites have lately given up the ghost and agreed almost unanimously to desert the dying town and move to one that is alive and has a bright future."

What Happened to Brainerd?

Reports of Brainerd's demise were greatly, but not entirely exaggerated. Though a majority of the town's businesses and citizens did make the move from Brainerd to Whitewater, about 50 residents and a few businesses stayed the course.

In 1901, Brainerd's declining population and many abandoned lots prompted the state legislature to include the town in a law mandating the vacating of certain townsites, streets, alleys, lots, blocks, roads and highways. The law effectively rezoned all "portions of the Townsite of Brainerd lying South of the Missouri Pacific Railraod" as farmland to be "restored to its original description." Though most of Brainerd's retail district in its late 1880s heyday lay north of the railroad, this act dampened any hopes that the town would ever take the shape predicted in its original 1885 plat.

An updated 1905 town plat reveals a Brainerd cut off at its knees, turning an orthogonal town into a T-town, with a triangular townsite bounded on the South by the railroad and maintaining its original boundaries on the North, East and West. Booming Whitewater's robust plat from the same year clearly demonstrates the dramatic effect a railroad crossing had on the physical and economic future of these neighboring communities. Polk's 1908 Kansas State Gazeteer and Business Directory confirms the evidence presented in the plat maps: there is no listing for Brainerd, which was described in great detail in 1888. Whitewater is made out to be a prosperous, lively community, with a population of 600, three churches, two banks, a flour mill, elevator, alfalfa mill and weekly newspaper.

Brainerd lost its post office and official incorporated town status in 1902, when rural mail delivery came to the area. But a blacksmith shop, operated by August Schmidt, continued to operate on the North end of Broadway until 1908, a stone's throw from Penner's livery. And Fred Schroke's general store remained on the West side of Broadway, across the tracks from the depot, into the early 1900s. On the opposite side of Broadway was the Brainerd Store, which (as we'll learn in the Memories section) kept local residents fed, clothed, equipped, informed and entertained until 1953, when it was converted into the Grace Bible Church. (It is known locally as the Grace Missionary Home, a home for church missionaries home on furlough.)

The Brainerd School continued to operate for children from first to eight grade in its original stone structure until 1929, when a new, two-room brick schoolhouse opened as its replacement just to the Southeast of the original school. Stone from the original schoolhouse was hauled away after the building was torn down, with much of the stone being incorporated into a Whitewater house constructed in the early 1930s. The school conducted its last term in 1964-1965, when School District Number 33 was consolidated into Whitewater Grade School in Unified District No. 206. However, in 1963, a new area high school opened on former farmland just north of Brainerd to the East of Broadway. Named Frederic Remington Area High School, in honor of the famous painter who lived in northwestern Butler County in the 1870s for a brief period, the high school draws from the Brainerd/Whitewater area. Its 2000 graduating class is expected to number 31 students, out of a total enrollment of 156.

For the record, Brainerd's total estimated current population is about 50 people, while Whitewater reported 683 residents in the 1990 Federal census and 701 residents in the 1999 Kansas Directory of Public Officials, an annual directory produced by the Kansas League of Municipalities.

They Tore Up the Tracks

Brainerd's largest enduring physical symbol of its onetime central-city status was its manually operated grain elevator. The elevator was rebuilt in 1923 by new owner Floyd Bachelder on the original site, across Broadway from the Missouri Pacific Depot, adjacent to the stockyards and sidetrack. The elevator had several owners through the 1930s, 1940s and 1950s, and was closed and used for storage from 1957 until 1969. It saw sporadic use again through the 1970s, and then sat empty until a 1990 wind storm destroyed the old elevator storage shed and rendered the structure useless. It was still proudly standing on my first visit to the area in 1994 and again in summer 1997, but was mostly dismantled when I last visited Brainerd in April 1999. The elevator site was finally cleared in spring 2000, and the last remains of the structure were hauled away.

The Missouri Pacific depot was replaced with a smaller, shed-like structure in the 1940s, with passengers riding in the caboose on a train known affectionately to locals as "Old Jurkie" or "Moppie," providing once-daily service to El Dorado and McPherson into the late 1940s. The line continued hauling cattle, grain and oil until 1985, when the tracks were rebuilt with longer rails, new ties and a new rock bed. In 1989, the eastbound Missouri Pacific line was rerouted south of Whitewater. As a result, service linking Whitewater and El Dorado (and all points in between, including Brainerd), was discontinued.

In fall 1993, the tracks were torn up between Whitewater and El Dorado, and the right-of-way was returned to the owners of the land through which the railroad had passed for the past 108 years. The last train pulled out of Brainerd on the morning of September 22, 1993. The old railbed is now overgrown with the prairie grass and wildflowers which once completely covered this part of Butler County, long before the homesteaders and the railroads left their brief mark on the landscape.