Crime Scene & Biohazard Cleanup Near Lyons Historic District Lyons, KS

Lyons is the county seat and largest city of Rice County in central Kansas; the county, founded in 1867, was named for Union Brigadier General Samuel Allen Rice, and it had 9,427 residents in the 2020 census.

Lyons was founded in 1870 under the name Atlanta, then renamed Lyons in 1876 in honor of Freeman J. Lyons, and it was incorporated in 1880, the same year the railroad was built through it.

Lyons's Main Street, now U.S. Highway 56, follows the route of the Santa Fe Trail.

Coronado's expedition is thought to have camped near present-day Lyons in 1541 while searching for the fabled golden city of Quivira, and a cross west of town commemorates Juan de Padilla, a friar from that expedition who was killed in 1542 and is considered the first Christian martyr in North America.

Salt made Lyons: the Western Salt Company sank its first mine shaft in 1890, and by the 1920s Lyons was being billed as one of the world's largest salt-producing centers.

The salt beneath Lyons is part of the Hutchinson Salt Member, which underlies all of Rice County at thicknesses of roughly 200 to 400 feet; the American Salt Company still mines rock salt about 1,000 feet below the city today.

In the 1970s Lyons drew national attention when the federal government considered using its salt formations as a burial site for high-level nuclear waste.

As of the 2020 census, Lyons had a population of 3,611 living in 1,462 households.

Hispanic and Latino residents made up 25.6 percent of Lyons's population in the 2020 census, one of the higher shares among central Kansas county seats.

Lyons students are served by the Lyons USD 405 public school district.