Discreet Biohazard Cleanup Near West Scammon Scammon, KS

Scammon is a small city in Cherokee County in the coal country of southeastern Kansas, laid out in 1884 and incorporated in 1888.

Scammon was named for the four Scammon brothers, who sank the area's first coal shaft and operated the first mine there.

The first underground shaft-mine in southeastern Kansas was opened in 1874 near what is now Scammon, launching the Cherokee-Crawford coal field that built the town.

Before it was Scammon, the settlement was known as Stilson and then briefly as Scammonville; its first post office opened under the Scammonville name in 1879 and was renamed Scammon in 1890.

David Mackie, a founder and builder of Scammon, served as the first president of the Scammon State Bank.

Scammon boomed with the coal industry and peaked at 2,233 residents in 1910, when it sat on the St. Louis & San Francisco Railroad about 8 miles north of Columbus, the county seat.

As the mines faded, so did Scammon: the 2020 census counted just 376 people, down from 482 in 2010, in a city covering only 0.64 square miles.

In 2010, Scammon's 482 residents lived in 192 households, and children in Scammon today attend schools in the Columbus USD 493 district.

Scammon's railroading past is kept alive by the Heart of the Heartlands railroad history group, based in Scammon and nearby Carona, which restored the old Carona depot as a museum.