Bigelow in the Distance

Jacob Inman operated a stone quarry on his farm located in Marshall County. A few houses were built in one section of his 160 acre farm in order to provide homes for those who operated the quarries, and later platted forty acres of his farm into town lots. He sold the lots at a nominal price, and when purchaser of a lot put up a house, they received free of charge an adjoining lot. Many took advantage of the offer and secured homes and the little town of Bigelow, Kansas, founded in 1881, grew and prospered. Inman offered the Missouri Pacific railroad land for a depot and his neighbor, John Yates, furnished land for the stockyards. In 1986, Allen E. Inman compiled a history of the town titled, "Bigelow, Kansas and its Founder, Jacob Inman" and it was distributed at the Bigelow picnic held yearly after the town's demise in the late 1950's due to the construction of Tuttle Creek Dam. This book is a rerun of that book with bits of additional information garnered from internet searches.