24/7 Biohazard and Crime Scene Cleanup in Ness City, KS

Ness City is a city in and the county seat of Ness County in west-central Kansas, located on Walnut Creek a short distance south of the county's geographic center.

Ness City was founded in 1878, with its townsite surveyed on October 22, 1878; Ross Calhoun, who arrived in 1877 or 1878 and opened the first general store, is remembered as the 'Father of Ness City.'

Both the city and county are named for Noah V. Ness, a corporal in Company G of the Seventh Kansas Cavalry who died in August 1864 at Abbeyville, Mississippi, of wounds received in action.

Ness City survived a bitter county-seat fight against the rival towns of Sidney and Clarinda that ran from 1880 to 1883 and involved accusations of bribery and fraud before Ness City was confirmed as the seat.

The town grew quickly after the railroad arrived in 1886, the same year Ness City was incorporated.

Ness City is famous for the four-story Old Ness County Bank Building downtown, a Romanesque Revival limestone landmark completed in 1890 at a reported cost of $35,000 and nicknamed the 'Skyscraper of the Plains.'

The bank building was built with crushed and ground limestone mixed into its mortar so the joints would match the stone exactly, and it even included an elevator shaft, a rarity for its time and place.

Ness County's government offices were housed in the bank building from 1903 until 1918, and the present Classical Revival courthouse, designed by J. C. Holland & Son of Topeka, was built in 1917.

As of the 2020 census, Ness City had 1,329 residents living in 595 households, down from a peak of 1,769 people in 1980.

Ness City keeps three museums, including a one-room limestone schoolhouse built in 1882 — the first schoolhouse in Ness County — preserved in its original location as the School House Museum.