Biohazard and Pathogen Disinfection in Hugoton, KS

Hugoton is the county seat of Stevens County in southwestern Kansas, near the Oklahoma border, at the intersection of U.S. Route 56 and state highways in the High Plains.

Hugoton was settled in 1885 by settlers from McPherson, Kansas, who first named it Hugo in honor of French writer Victor Hugo, then changed it to Hugoton to distinguish it from Hugo, Colorado.

Hugoton's first post office was established in April 1886, and the city was incorporated in 1910.

Hugoton won a violent county-seat war against the rival town of Woodsdale: the feud culminated in the Hay Meadow Massacre of July 25, 1888, in which four men were killed, and Woodsdale's founder was assassinated outside the Hugoton courthouse in 1891.

The Santa Fe Railway reached Hugoton in 1913, spurring the farm town's early growth.

Natural gas was discovered southwest of Hugoton in 1927 at the Crawford No. 1 well, transforming the town into a major center of the natural gas industry.

The Hugoton natural gas field, which bears the city's name, is the largest natural gas field in North America and the second largest in the world, and it earned Hugoton the nickname 'Natural Gas Capital.'

As of the 2020 census, Hugoton had a population of 3,747 — more than 70 percent of Stevens County's total population of 5,250.

Hugoton's United Methodist church, founded in 1886, was the first church established in Stevens County and remains active.

Stevens County, of which Hugoton is the seat, was named for Thaddeus Stevens, the Reconstruction-era Pennsylvania congressman, and the county lay in the heart of the Dust Bowl during the 1930s.