Our Mission

The mission of the Lyon County Museum and Historical Society is to provide education and research, and to promote the appreciation of our unique heritage through the preservation, exhibition, and interpretation of artifacts and archival material representing the history of Lyon County, Kansas.

Our Collection

The Lyon County Museum and Historical Society was founded in 1937. Our current Museum holdings include over 150,000 items of Lyon County history spanning from 1865 to the present.

"Out of this community of people, which for want of a better name we will call Anglo-Saxon, has been developed the towns and county that abide today. It was inevitable it should grow as it has grown. To understand it, to appreciate it, to love it all, we must know its seeds and the beginnings of its growth."

How It All Started

Much of the settlement of Lyon County was made by immigrants from other states, as early as 1857 many Welsh were arriving, and they continued to come in large numbers through the 1880's. French, Swiss, and German settlers began coming in the 1860's, also. The Welsh came in the largest numbers, the Germans next, and the French third. The Welsh secured the bottom land whenever possible while the Germans took the high prairie land and made excellent farms of this land. This same land, only a decade or two earlier, had been condemned as worthless.

The first road in Lyon County was the Santa Fe Trail, entering from Osage County in an east to west direction approximately 3 miles north of Admire, Kansas.

Created on 10/13/2005 10:54 PM by lycohiso Updated on 04/26/2008 01:12 PM by lycohiso