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
The main street of Kipp once housed bustling blacksmith shops, general stores and lumberyards. Through years of hardships in the 20th century, the town eventually dwindled to a small community in rural Saline County.
In its early days, though, Kipp was a thriving town aiming for the future.
According to the Smoky Hill Museum, before the Missouri Pacific Railroad arrived in 1886, William Exline opened a blacksmith shop in what would become Kipp, Kan.
Before its residents could comfortably settle in the region, Kipp citizens aimed to bring a Missouri Pacific Railroad Depot to town in 1886 but didn't yet have a building to show to the company.
They then decided on a creative solution — steal the nearby village of Chico's train depot for their own. The Smoky Hill Museum documented this peculiar event as "The Kipp Depot Caper," where a group of men from Kipp visited Chico, raised the depot from its foundation, and slid it onto a railroad car to transport it back to Kipp.
Later documents found that the Missouri Pacific Railroad's roadmaster, Kipp Cherry, was a part of the caper plan and that the company wanted to move the depot from Chico to Kipp anyway.
Once more industry arrived in town, the Kipp Post Office opened in 1890, cementing the community in Saline County history.
With more industry in town, telephone wires quickly popped up in 1907, and Iva Vestor was the town's first phone operator. Exline's blacksmith shop evolved through this time into Exline Diesel Engine Works, which today is Exline, Inc.
By the 1920s, the Kipp State Bank opened on Main Street, but it didn't last long, with The Great Depression stamping out most banks in the 1930s.
READ MORE: 📸 Flashback Friday: Salina Post - The Hub - Vol. 29
The looming economic threat didn't stop the small town from pushing forward, with a $55,000, almost $1 million in today's cash, bond issue passing in 1929 for a "full service" school with the "largest gym in rural Saline County."
For about a decade, the town thrived with a bustling school and lively downtown until 1943, when a tornado berated the city and destroyed part of the school, several houses and most of the Exline Machine Shop.
Citizens rebuilt the school and residential area in town, but Exline moved its operations to Salina and continues operating today from the city.
Kipp experienced another decade of peace in rural Saline County when, in 1953, the school burned to the ground. The city built a new school, but it closed in the 1960s.
According to the Smoky Hill Museum, the Kipp Post Office closed in 1957, and Great Plains Manufacturing eventually took over the abandoned school building.