Village of Elk: Part 2
By ROWENA PLETT
Staff writer
(As told in part one, published Sept. 1, Elk was established in 1865 when a settler by the name of Henry Collett became postmaster and used the letters E L K to post mail. He established various businesses at the home site, which straddled the Marion/Chase county line.)
Elk was on the mail route which went from Junction City through Woodbine, Lincolnville, and Elk, to Elmdale. Later a rural route was established to Elk out of Elmdale.
Henry Collett's son, Frank, became postmaster after he died in 1904. Various others served later, after Frank moved two miles west and established a new homestead. The post office was in operation until 1923, when the Lincolnville route was expanded.
Men in the Elk community organized a Woodsman Lodge. They held meetings in the upper floor of the two-story building. Social events and dances were held there, too. It burned in 1908. The shop was rebuilt.
In 1910, Woodsman Lodge members built their own hall on a lot bought from Linn. It, too, was destroyed by fire in 1923.
After Henry Collett died, Frank took over the village store. He sold it two years later, and it changed hands several more times.
Charles O'Bryant, a merchant from Marion, purchased the store and operated it until his sudden death in 1927. O'Bryant was known as "Bard of the Flint Hills" because of his captivating weekly columns printed in Marion and Chase County newspapers. After his death, his wife closed the business and moved back to Marion.
Although Elk never had a school building, four rural school districts were organized in surrounding areas. Two churches, a Methodist and Lutheran, also were organized. A consolidated school east of Elk was in existence until 1960 and also served as a community center.
The Elk Cemetery is just east of the school site and remains a well-kept resting place today. Henry Collett's parents' homestead was across the road south of the cemetery.
Final days
The Elk store building burned down in 1930. No buildings were left.
On Feb. 2, 1931, a Topeka newspaper headlined, "Elk is No More."
However, the village didn't die quickly. By the end of the year a service station/store was erected on the Marion County side close to the old village site. Proprietor John Rabuse and his wife lived in a nearby house originally built by Fred Collett.
According to Shirley Collett, now Shirley Bowers, the business was still in existence in 1948 or 1949. She wrote a story about Elk as a college assignment while attending Kansas State Teacher's College in Emporia.
According to Alton Matz of Lincolnville, when his father Ferdinand bought the original Jacob Linn farm west of the station in 1950, the business had just been closed. After the 1951 flood, the Rabuses moved the house to Elmdale.
Fritz Koch bought the service station and moved it to his home at 607 S. Roosevelt in Marion, using it as an attached garage. After his death, his wife married Jack Spain. Two years ago, Spain tore down the garage and replaced it.
Alton Matz took over the farm from his father in 1972, and in 1975 he bought the one or two acres the store stood on. He said the abstract records Elk with six lots on the Marion County side. Alton's son, Brad, now operates the farm.
Howard Collett, Shirley's brother and great-grandson of Elk's founder, remembers spending many hours with siblings and friends at a swimming hole which was located near a stone-arch bridge spanning Middle Creek south of Elk.
"They were halcyon days of wonderful memories," he said.
The bridge is still there but no longer spans the creek, which was rerouted.
William Least Heat-Moon included several chapters on Elk in his book, "PrairyErth," published in 1995. He claimed federal land policies caused much of the local grassland owned by railroads to be sold to large land speculators or ranching syndicates, essentially boxing-in the settlers.
"What the Cottonwood in flood did to valley towns, federal land policy did to this upland village," he wrote.
Time and so-called "progress" relentlessly move on. In 2004, no traces of Elk remain. The site on which it was located is a forest and Main Street is no more. But warm memories of Elk linger on in the hearts and minds of many people.
(Sources include members of the Collett family and "Marion County History, Past and Present," by Sondra Van Meter, 1972.)
