Emergency Crime Scene and Biohazard Cleanup in Kanopolis, KS

Kanopolis is a city in Ellsworth County that was built on the site of Fort Harker, a U.S. Army post that housed infantry and cavalry troops during the Indian Wars from 1867 to 1872.

Before the fort, Fort Ellsworth was established in August 1864 at the junction of the Fort Riley-Fort Larned Road and the Smoky Hill Trail to protect construction of the Union Pacific railroad, and it was renamed Fort Harker in November 1866 for General Charles G. Harker, who had been killed in battle in 1864.

At its height Fort Harker was one of the most important military stations west of the Missouri River, using about 700 soldiers and twice as many civilian employees, and supplying mail to military posts down the Arkansas River and in Colorado and New Mexico.

The Kanopolis Land Company, a group of Ohio capitalists chartered on March 15, 1886, bought the old fort land and laid out a townsite for 150,000 people, envisioning Kanopolis as the 'Central Metropolis' of Kansas and a future state capital.

Kanopolis was incorporated on January 6, 1887, but it never became the 'Queen City of the Midwest' its boosters promised, and it lost a referendum by just 75 votes to become the seat of Ellsworth County.

Kanopolis peaked at 868 residents in 1940, and the 2020 census counted 443 people living in 205 households.

The Independent Salt Company operates a salt works a little over a mile northeast of Kanopolis, continuing the salt mining tradition of the Smoky Hill country.

Kanopolis students are served by Ellsworth USD 327, whose high school Bearcats are in nearby Ellsworth; the old Kanopolis High School, whose mascot was the Bulldogs, was closed in school unification.

Just outside town are Kanopolis Lake and Kanopolis State Park, along with Mushroom Rock State Park and the Faris Caves, and the town even has its own Kanopolis Drive-in Theatre.

Kanopolis has a humid subtropical climate with hot, humid summers and generally mild to cool winters.