(The following article by Marathana Furches and Chris Strunk appeared on The Kansas website on November 20.)
NEWTON, Kan. — Geneva Manning can remember a time when McLains was more than a thing of the past. When her family moved to town in 1927, she was about 9 years old. The town had a filling station, department and grocery stores and a blacksmith shop. Back then, the train came through often.
But those days are gone. Long gone.
The tracks have been pulled up and all that remains is a grain elevator, the trucks carrying grain to and from the elevator, and a few citizens who can remember the baseball games played on the southeast corner of the one-intersection town in the 1930s.
Railroad crews have been in the McLains area for the past several weeks, tearing out about seven miles of track that as recently as this summer had hosted daily freight train traffic. The track connected Newton and Whitewater.
“I hate to see it go. I really do,” said Scot Kelso, a Union Pacific conductor who lives in the McLains area.
Dana Shifflett, who lives southeast of McLains, said he misses the sounds of the trains rumbling near his property.
“It’s just nice to listen to trains go through at night,” Shifflett said.
Though the town’s name remains on most maps and the local grain elevator continues to be a vital link to McLains’ past, the removal of the rail line was seen by some longtime residents as the symbolic death of their beloved southeast Harvey County town.
According to the Harvey County Historical Society, McLains was founded in 1890 and named after a Newton banker, A.H. McLain, who owned most of the land, formerly known as Section 31 of Pleasant Township.
Bill Brown, a former manager of the McLains grain elevator, said when he moved to town in 1958, the town was one of many located along the rail line between El Dorado and Newton.
“Back in the old days — the borscht buggy days — towns were about 10 miles apart because it was a good trip to Newton, and people needed to get their supplies in a one-day trip,” Brown said.
By the time Brown moved to McLains, the buggy days were over and all that remained was the elevator and a corner shop that worked on automobiles, he said.
“We were open full-time and had a good business going with feed, seed and anhydrous ammonia,” Brown said.
During his 20 years working at the elevator, ownership changed four times and it was difficult for any one owner to maintain its success.
Manning said there were many things that helped kill McLains, but the most hurtful thing to the community, in her eyes, was the unification of schools.
“That was the biggest hurt — when Newton closed Suncrest and Pleasant schools,” she said.
It was one of the final blows in removing the community’s individual identity.
As far as designating a defining moment that ended McLains, Manning couldn’t point one out.
“These things happen over time, and you can’t really say one thing or another caused it. It’s just progress, I guess,” Manning said.
As for the question of whether or not it’s McLains or McLain, the majority of the Kansan’s sources confirmed McLains as the official title.
“It’s McLains. Sometimes people have a tendency to drop that ‘s,’ but it’s McLains,” Manning said.