Biohazard and Pathogen Disinfection in Atwood, KS

Atwood is the county seat and largest city of Rawlins County in far northwestern Kansas, just south of the Nebraska state line.

The town was started in 1875 by T.A. Andrews and J.M. Matheny and was originally spelled 'Attwood' with two t's, named after Matheny's 14-year-old son, Attwood Matheny, who had come along on the trip.

In 1882 the U.S. Post Office asked to drop one 't,' and Attwood officially became Atwood.

After the first townsite turned out to sit on school land, the town picked up and moved in the spring of 1880 to its present site on Beaver Creek, near the center of the county.

Atwood became the Rawlins County seat in 1881 and was incorporated in 1885.

The 2020 census counted 1,290 people in Atwood living in 557 households, and the city actually grew about 8 percent over the decade, up from 1,194 in 2010 — though it remains well below its 1960 peak of 1,906.

Atwood covers just 1.10 square miles at an elevation of 2,854 feet, and it has a semi-arid High Plains climate with only about 22 inches of precipitation a year and a record high of 118 degrees.

Two highways cross in Atwood — east-west U.S. Route 36 and north-south K-25 — and the Nebraska Kansas Colorado Railway still runs through town.

Local landmarks include the Rawlins County Historical Museum at 308 State Street, the historic Shirley Opera House at 503 Main Street, which is listed on the National Register of Historic Places, and Lake Atwood just north of town.

Atwood hosts the Rawlins County Fair every July, one of the social highlights of the year in this farming county of fewer than 2,600 people.