Crime Scene and Trauma Cleanup in Asherville, KS

Asherville is an unincorporated community and census-designated place in Mitchell County, Kansas, set in the Solomon Valley on the Solomon River about 10 miles southeast of Beloit, the county seat.

The first settlement at Asherville was made in 1866 on Asher Creek, from which the community takes its name, and founder John Rees — an English immigrant and Civil War veteran — opened a grocery store there in early 1867 that was the first store in Mitchell County.

Asherville had the oldest post office in Mitchell County, established on November 15, 1869, with John Rees as its first postmaster, and it stayed in operation until it closed on March 28, 1980.

The village of Asherville began in the early 1870s as part of the Rees homestead and was platted and laid out, but it was never incorporated.

By the early 1880s Asherville was a flourishing station on the Kansas Pacific Railroad, and by 1910 it was a thriving little town on the Union Pacific Railroad with a money-order post office, telegraph and express offices, and a population of 125.

Asherville's population fell sharply over the following century, and the 2020 census counted just 19 people in the CDP, while the surrounding Asherville Township counted 119 people in 2020.

Legends of Kansas describes Asherville today as an extinct town, though it still has several homes, a fire station, silos, a working grain elevator, and a building that once held its bank and store, and the small Bogardus-Bell Cemetery a mile north commemorates pioneer settlers killed in an August 1868 raid along the Solomon River.

The community is served by Beloit USD 273 public school district, headquartered in Beloit, whose schools include Beloit Junior-Senior High School.