Failed Canal Nominated for Historic Register

The humble remnants of a canal that was part of a 19th-century plan to irrigate southwest Kansas farms are among the state’s latest nominees for the National Register of Historic Places.

The Hutchinson News reports the Kansas Historic Sites Board of Review voted recently to forward nine nominations to the Keeper of the National Register in Washington.

The nominees are as diverse as the First Congregational Church in Independence, a former 1920s-era service station in Whiting, and a Lane County farmstead that has been in the same family since 1928.

Also nominated are two remaining segments in Gray County of the 96-mile Soule Canal, dug in the 1880s. The canal was meant to carry water from the Arkansas River to farms, but it proved to be a failure.