Unattended Death and Biohazard Cleanup in Andover, KS

Andover is a fast-growing eastern suburb of Wichita in Butler County, which is the largest county in Kansas by area — bigger than the entire state of Rhode Island.

The town was platted in February 1880 under the name Cloud City, after a well-respected railroad engineer named Mr. Cloud, but after Cloud had a falling out with local residents the name was changed to Andover — after Andover, Massachusetts — on June 7, 1880.

Before it was Cloud City, the Andover area was known as Minneha, a Native American name given when Kansas Territory was first mapped, and its first post office branch opened there in 1880.

Andover was not incorporated as a city until 1957, more than three-quarters of a century after the townsite was platted, when the City of Andover was formally established.

According to the 2020 census, Andover had a population of 14,892, making it the most populous city in Butler County.

Census QuickFacts counts about 5,269 households in Andover for 2020–2024, with an owner-occupied housing rate of 80.7% and an average of 3.00 persons per household, well above the national average household size.

Andover's population has exploded with suburban growth — Census Bureau estimates put it at about 17,370 by July 2025, up from just 6,698 in the 2000 census.

On April 26, 1991, a historic F5 tornado swept through Andover, and the city was struck by another damaging tornado on April 29, 2022.

Andover's best-known 19th-century event was a train robbery carried out at 10:00 p.m. on July 17, 1898, after the Frisco Railway was completed through town in 1880.

Butler Community College operates its Redler Institute in Andover, where local high school students can earn college credit — and even an associate-level credential — at the same time they graduate from high school.