Biohazard and Pathogen Disinfection in Ulysses, KS

Ulysses is the county seat of Grant County in far southwest Kansas and is the county's only incorporated city.

Both Ulysses and Grant County are named after Ulysses S. Grant, the 18th President of the United States, who was still in office when the county was first created in 1873.

The original town of Ulysses was founded in June 1885, about two miles east of the present city, and within about six weeks it already had its own newspaper, The Grant County Register.

In its 1880s boom, Old Ulysses boasted four hotels, twelve restaurants, twelve saloons, a bank, an opera house, and roughly 1,500 residents.

Mountain man and explorer Jedediah Smith was killed by Comanche warriors on May 27, 1831, just south of where Ulysses would later be founded, when the area was still part of northern Mexico.

When boom-era bond debt came due and the shrunken town — down to only a few dozen residents — could not pay, Ulysses did something almost unheard of: in 1909 it moved the entire town about two miles west to escape the debt, leaving the old lots to the bondholders.

The 1909 move took roughly three months, with smaller buildings hauled on wagons and larger ones dragged on skids; the Hotel Edwards had to be cut into sections, and one section alone reportedly took 60 horses to pull.

The relocated town, first called New Ulysses, was declared the county seat in June 1909, and the city was formally incorporated in 1921, the same year the name was shortened back to plain Ulysses.

As of the 2020 census, Ulysses had a population of 5,788 living in 2,084 households.

The moved and restored Hotel Edwards now stands on the grounds of Ulysses's Historic Adobe Museum, the Grant County museum complex on U.S. Highway 160, which also preserves a one-room schoolhouse and Santa Fe Trail artifacts.