24/7 Trauma and Biohazard Cleanup in Shallow Water, KS

Shallow Water is an unincorporated community and census-designated place in southern Scott County in western Kansas, located about seven miles south of Scott City off Highway 83.

Shallow Water was named for the shallow water table near the earth's surface beneath the townsite.

The town was established in 1912, when H. J. Mott received a half-section of land from the Friends Society (the Quaker Church); it was surveyed in June 1912, and many of its streets were named after Quakers.

Shallow Water's post office was established on January 13, 1913, and closed on October 31, 1957 — the loss of its post office is why the community is classed as an extinct town.

The Friends Society built Shallow Water's first church in 1914, and a general store opened in the community in 1916.

The 2020 census counted 89 people in Shallow Water, spread over about half a square mile.

Shallow Water is the northern terminus of the Garden City Western Railway, and the railroad made it a grain hub for southern Scott County, with two grain elevators and stockyards for shipping cattle to Kansas City.

The Shallow Water Refining Company, about four miles south of town, processed crude from the Shallow Water oil pool — discovered in December 1934 — at a daily capacity of 1,500 barrels before the refinery closed in 1981.

Between 1939 and 1942 the Works Progress Administration built the Shallow Water School from local adobe in a mission style — described as Kansas's only known adobe school — and it was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 2005.

The Shallow Water Tigers won the Kansas Class B boys cross country state championship in 1960 and 1961; the high school closed in 1969 and the elementary school in 2004, and the community is now served by Scott County USD 466.