Salina Post proudly presents Flashback Friday in partnership with the Smoky Hill Museum. Enjoy a weekly tidbit of local history from the staff at Salina Post and the Smoky Hill Museum as we present "Salina-Flashback Fridays."
By SALINA POST
Although the township of Hedville was never officially incorporated, its impact on the Saline County rural community still holds weight today.
On Mulberry Creek Crossing in 1905, two brothers, Axel and Elmer Hedquist, opened a general store and blacksmith shop on the site that would become the town of Hedville.
The brothers continued business in the area, witnessing a few more homes pop up around their stores until a decade later when a regional rail line brought business to the town.
Situated in its small valley, Hedville began to grow in 1915 after the Salina Northern Railroad built a line nearby, according to the Smoky Hill Museum.
After the railroad arrived, so did local business. Soon, the town boasted a lumberyard, hardware store, grain elevator and filling station. The Hedville State Bank opened the same year, and only two years later, the founders established the Immanuel Lutheran Church.
READ MORE: 📸 Flashback Friday: Salina Post - Salina Natatorium - Vol. 32
Hedville continued its business, growing with more families arriving and establishing themselves in the community. Hardships would soon strike with the arrival of The Great Depression.
Like similar Great Plains towns, the 1930s arrived in Hedville with ruthless consequences. According to the Smoky Hill Museum, the bank and many businesses closed in town, with the Immanuel Church closing its doors for good in 1938.
Only two decades after the decimating Great Depression for the town, Hedville's rural school closed from the 1960s statewide consolidation of public schools.
A few residents of Hedville stayed in the town, and although little remains of its early 20th-century growth, the small community found a new revival at the turn of this century with the Rolling Hills Zoo.
Rolling Hills Zoo opened in 1999 with only a few barn animals just south of town, and today, it has become a major Kansas tourist attraction.