These two houses used to ornament the residential street which ran
parallel to the main street. The one in the rear has a covered
walkway to the attached privy, a porch to the well, finely mortised
and plastered walls and real flooring.
The population was between five hundred and one thousand, and cabins
were going up fast. On September 24, the _Spar City Spark_ started
publication, and on October 29 a preliminary meeting of the town council
was held. Six grocery stores, two restaurants, three livery stables,
four saloons, two dance halls, a post office, a school and an assay
office, besides the newspaper, were all going full tilt on the promise
of great things to come. But the promise was never fulfilled. The Emma’s
ore proved too lean in values to ship. By the following year the Silver
Panic cast a pall over all mining camps dependent on the white metal.
Spar City lasted only through 1894 with people departing as hurriedly as
they came. The editor of the _Spar City Spark_ fled, leaving his fonts
of type and issues of the paper. By 1895 the town’s population mustered
only twenty.
One of the prospectors who lingered on was Charles Brandt. On November
20, 1899, he filed on a homestead covering the entire townsite, and for
a number of years Brandt was the sole owner. In 1908 backed by Charles
King of Hutchinson, Kansas, he started the Bird Creek mine. Some ore was
taken out; but it was the Emma’s story over again. The ore was not rich
enough for profitable operation.
On August 14, 1913, Charles King and other Kansas friends took over the
townsite as a club for summer residents. They hired a caretaker for the
property and set up rules for its thirty-five members. In 1955 the club,
with its same limited membership, was changed to a corporation. Now a
share of the stock goes with the sale of a cabin although the rules
remain the same. No new cabins are permitted, and to buy an old cabin
you must be passed on by the board of directors.
Spar City has a charming location with a view to the northwest of
Bristol Head and beyond to the continental divide. It has three fishing
and boating ponds and a community hall made from the old hotel. Here the
annual banquet for members is held. The place is a going concern, aided
by an informative history of the club, written by S. Horace Jones of
Lyons, Kansas, designed to keep Spar City’s traditions straight through
the years of progress.
Some of the older members, like Dorothy Ruehling and Dr. O. W. Longwood,
preserved copies of the _Spar City Spark_, the minutes of the town
council, and other historical mementoes which were graciously shown to
visitors interested in the town’s development.
In 1960 Spar City was the least ghostly of our ghost towns despite the
fact that once it had been a genuine ghost town for some fifteen years.
Yet it found a place in our booklet on two counts—a mining town that
never shipped a ton of ore and a boom camp that metamorphosed into a
sedate well-ordered club. In each instance no stranger dispensation of
fate could be imagined.
(_Photos of Spar City on following two pages_)
[Illustration: Orin Hargraves, 1960]