Blood, Trauma, and Biohazard Cleanup in Franklin, KS

Franklin is an unincorporated census-designated place in Crawford County in southeast Kansas, located along U.S. Route 69 about one mile south of Arma.

Franklin began as a coal mining community in the early 1900s and was a shipping point on the Joplin & Pittsburg electric railroad; its first post office was established in 1908.

Franklin sits in the Crawford County coalfield once nicknamed the 'Little Balkans,' where immigrants from more than 50 nations came to work in mines that made southeast Kansas one of the nation's leading coal-producing regions.

The 2020 census counted 473 people in Franklin living in 173 households, a 26% rebound from 375 people in 2010.

On May 4, 2003, a high-end F4 tornado more than half a mile wide at points all but destroyed Franklin, killing four people, wrecking the post office and community center, and destroying about a third of the town's homes.

Franklin's Miners Hall Museum, opened on May 1, 2012 on the site of the old union hall, preserves the history of coal mining and its immigrant culture in southeast Kansas.

Franklin was a starting point of the December 1921 'Amazon Army' march, when thousands of wives, daughters, and mothers of striking coal miners marched from the union hall to shut down area mines for three days, making national headlines.

The Franklin Sidewalk, built in 1936 with federal funding, runs 1.7 miles north to Arma and is billed as the 'longest sidewalk connecting two communities'; it once appeared in the Guinness Book of World Records and was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 2007.