Biohazard Cleanup Near North Gorham Gorham, KS

Gorham is a small city in Russell County in north-central Kansas, in the Smoky Hills region of the Great Plains.

Pennsylvania Dutch settlers from Philadelphia and Lancaster, Pennsylvania, established a community along the Kansas Pacific Railway at the future Gorham site in April 1872.

Elijah Dodge Gorham, a settler from Illinois, platted the town in 1879 and gave it his name.

Gorham formally established the town in July 1886, donating land for a Catholic church and cemetery and starting several businesses, including a general store, a grain elevator, a post office, a lumberyard and a coal yard.

The discovery of oil deposits in Russell County in the 1920s transformed Gorham's economy, bringing in companies such as Texaco, Stanolind and Sohio, along with new brick school buildings in 1922 and 1930.

Despite its 1880s founding, Gorham did not incorporate as a city until 1941.

Gorham's population peaked at 429 in 1960, and unusually for rural Kansas it grew in the last decade - the 2020 census counted 376 people, up 12.6 percent from 334 in 2010.

In the 2010 census, Gorham had 334 people living in 150 households.

The whole city covers just 0.24 square miles, about 9 miles west of the county seat of Russell and just north of Interstate 70.

Gorham's public schools joined Russell County Schools (USD 407) in 1967, and its students now attend Russell High School.