Blood & Biohazard Cleanup Near Downtown Rolla Rolla, KS

Rolla is a small city in Morton County, in the far southwestern corner of Kansas, and its first post office was established in 1907.

Rolla was laid out in 1913 and incorporated in 1921, and it is named after Rollie Williamson, who arrived in western Kansas in a covered wagon in 1907 to join his father, an area homesteader.

As of the 2020 census, Rolla had a population of 384, down from a peak of 482 people in 2000; the 2010 census counted 442 people in 166 households.

Rolla sits at an elevation of about 3,327 feet on the High Plains and has a semi-arid climate, and it covers just 0.37 square miles of land.

Rolla was at the heart of the Dust Bowl in the 1930s — a famous photograph of a dust storm hitting Rolla on May 6, 1935, became an enduring image of the era — and Morton County was the Kansas county most devastated by the Dust Bowl, losing almost half its population in that decade.

Part of the Cimarron National Grassland, the largest national grassland in Kansas, lies within Rolla Township, which surrounds the city and had 480 residents in the 2020 census.

The community is served by Rolla USD 217, and the Rolla High School Pirates won Kansas state championships in Class BB basketball in 1958 and in 8-man football in 1973 and 1996.

Morton County, whose seat is Elkhart, had just 2,701 residents in the 2020 census, making Rolla one of only a handful of communities in one of Kansas's least populous counties.