Lyon County History Center

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A late-night robbery at one of Emporia’s best-known hotels.On the night of March 26, 1902, two men walked into the Whitl...
09/03/2026

A late-night robbery at one of Emporia’s best-known hotels.

On the night of March 26, 1902, two men walked into the Whitley Hotel around 12:30 a.m. and held up the people inside.

At the time, only people in the lobby were: night clerk P. M. Vickery, traveling salesman W. F. Sullivan, porter Jesse Reeves, and one of the robbers. The porter was asleep, Vickery was working behind the counter, and Sullivan was sitting at a table.

The first robber entered through the south door and approached Vickery with a .38-caliber revolver pointed at his head.

Sullivan immediately dropped beneath the table and tried to crawl to safety behind a radiator, only to run directly into the gun of a second robber, who had entered through the east door.

The robbers demanded money. Vickery tried to stall them, even trying several keys before finally opening the cash drawer. The first robber went through the drawer while keeping his eyes and gun trained on the clerk.

He then ordered Vickery to open the safe. When the clerk claimed he didn't know the combination, the robber instead ordered him out from behind the counter and escorted him into the lobby.

Meanwhile, the second robber searched Sullivan and found $48 hidden in the inside pocket of his waistcoat. He even examined Sullivan's watch, decided not to take it, and put it back.

Once the robbery was over, Vickery, Sullivan, and Reeves were locked inside the baggage room while the two men escaped through the south door.

In total, the robbers got away with $64.10, about $14.85 belonging to the hotel, $48 from Sullivan, and $1.25 belonging to the clerk. (~$2,490 today)

And remarkably, they missed another $100. (~$3,883 today)

A traveling man carrying that money had stepped into the bathroom just minutes before the robbers arrived. He came back out just after they had left.

The two men were described as rough-looking, with black slouch hats pulled low over their eyes and dirty red bandanas covering their faces. Both carried nickel-plated .38-caliber revolvers.

Police suspected the robbery was the work of "local talent," but had no clue who was responsible.

The Whitley Hotel itself was a major Emporia landmark. Originally opened in 1881 as the Hotel Coolidge, it was later renamed the Whitley Hotel under the management of Colonel H.C. Whitley. For nearly 40 years, it stood at Sixth Avenue and Merchant Street and was considered one of the finest hotels in Kansas.

Less than two decades after this robbery, the Whitley would make the headlines again, this time for a devastating fire in 1921 that destroyed the building.

But in 1902, the story was a pair of late-night robbers, a frightened hotel clerk, and a very lucky traveling man who happened to be in the washroom at exactly the right time.

If you're from Emporia, you probably know the Lowther buildings. But before Lowther became a familiar part of growing up...
08/31/2026

If you're from Emporia, you probably know the Lowther buildings. But before Lowther became a familiar part of growing up here, the school district had a problem: there simply wasn’t enough room for everyone.

In the early 1920s, students in grades 7 through 12 were all sharing the old senior high school building. High school students went in the morning, and then the 7th through 9th graders came in for the afternoon. By December 1923, plans for a new junior high school had been approved.

The school was named for L.A. Lowther, Emporia’s superintendent of schools, who had worked to make the new school a reality. It was designed with more than classrooms, including a shop, home economics and art rooms, and a large auditorium. Above the stage was a motto suggested by William Allen White: “The Days That Make Us Happy, Make Us Wise.”

That building eventually became Lowther South. When the new Emporia High School opened in the 1970s, the old high school building became Lowther North, creating the two-building Lowther campus generations of students would know.

The buildings eventually left the school system, but their story continues.

Today, the buildings remain part of Emporia’s landscape, and for many former students, “Lowther” probably brings back more than a building. It brings back teachers, classmates, games, performances and memories.

Did you go to the Lowther schools? We’d love to hear what you remember.

08/26/2026

Women’s Equality Day is a chance to remember the women who helped make progress possible. In Kansas, women gained full suffrage in 1912, and Emporia’s Mary J. Perley was one of the local leaders who helped push the fight for women’s voting rights forward.

Tomorrow, August 26, is Women’s Equality Day, a day to recognize the long fight for women’s equal rights and opportuniti...
08/25/2026

Tomorrow, August 26, is Women’s Equality Day, a day to recognize the long fight for women’s equal rights and opportunities.

One of the cornerstones of that fight was the right to vote.

Long before women gained the right to vote nationally, Kansans were debating the question in newspapers, meeting halls, churches, and communities. These clippings offer a glimpse into some of those arguments, with writers discussing everything from voting and taxation to jury service, property rights, and women’s role in public life.

Kansas was at the center of the suffrage movement. In 1867, Kansas became the first state to put a woman suffrage question directly before voters. Although the proposal was defeated, the fight continued. Kansas women gained municipal voting rights in 1887 and finally won full voting rights in state elections in 1912, eight years before the 19th Amendment was ratified nationally.

And Lyon County was part of that story.

By 1912, Lyon County had a strong, organized suffrage movement. Local women held suffrage programs in homes, churches, schools, reunions, and fairs, while the Emporia Gazette publicly supported equal suffrage. When the amendment went before Kansas voters in 1912, Lyon County voted in favor.

The right to vote was an important milestone, but it was only one part of the much larger story of women’s equality.

As we recognize Women’s Equality Day tomorrow, these old newspaper clippings remind us that the questions surrounding equality have been debated for generations, and that women here in Lyon County were part of that conversation.

What stories of the women who helped shape Lyon County do you know?

08/24/2026

Emporia State University has been part of Emporia and Kansas history for more than 160 years. From Kansas State Normal to ESU, here’s how a small teacher-training school became a university. What name do you know it as?

Do you remember your favorite school lunch? Or maybe the one you absolutely dreaded seeing on the menu?This 1976 school ...
08/21/2026

Do you remember your favorite school lunch? Or maybe the one you absolutely dreaded seeing on the menu?

This 1976 school menu gives us a little taste of what lunchtime looked like 50 years ago. Hamburgers, hot turkey sandwiches, chili dogs, lasagna, Tater Tots, cinnamon rolls, strawberry shortcake. And, of course, a carton of milk. Some things might look pretty familiar, while others may have disappeared from the cafeteria long ago.

What was your favorite school lunch growing up? And what was the one meal you hoped you wouldn't see on the menu?

** Emporia Gazette Clipping, Dec 11, 1976.

08/20/2026

A young woman from Americus, Kansas, turned a hobby in her father’s cabinet shop into Marlow Woodcuts, a business whose handcrafted designs reached across America. Margaret Lowe Burke’s story is one of creativity, entrepreneurship, family, and Lyon County history.

08/18/2026

The College of Emporia helped shape Emporia and Lyon County for nearly 90 years. From its founding in 1882 to the Fighting Presbyterians and more than 1,000 students in the 1960s, discover the story of C. of E. and its lasting impact on Emporia history.

Frederick Macke and Emporia’s Forgotten BreweryIn the late 1860s, a German immigrant named Frederick H. Macke came to Em...
08/13/2026

Frederick Macke and Emporia’s Forgotten Brewery

In the late 1860s, a German immigrant named Frederick H. Macke came to Emporia with an idea: build a brewery.

Macke had learned the cooper’s trade and became familiar with brewing while living near Topeka. Around 1868 or 1869, he established his brewery north of the State Normal School. It was a major undertaking, with a large building, extensive cellars, and a reported construction cost of $30,000.

For years, Macke’s brewery produced beer that was sold to customers across Kansas. At one point, The Emporia Gazette suggested that Macke was on his way to becoming one of the state’s great brewery owners.

But Macke had chosen a complicated time to build a beer business in Kansas.

For decades, liquor had been a major political and social issue in the state. Kansas communities had debated whether saloons should be licensed or shut down, and by the 1870s the temperance movement was gaining strength. In Emporia, the question was becoming increasingly heated.

In 1874, The Emporia Ledger reported that local temperance advocates were pushing for liquor dealers to be prosecuted under state law. Among those targeted was F. W. Macke, accused of selling beer on a Sunday.

Five years later, something far more dramatic happened inside Macke’s brewery.

A group of men became heavily intoxicated, and an argument over who would pay for their beer turned violent. Peter Burgtie was fatally shot during the confrontation. Investigators eventually pulled a double-barreled shotgun from a 50-foot-deep well in the brewery’s beer vault. Exactly what happened remained uncertain, with the newspaper offering only a theory about how Burgtie may have been accidentally killed.

Meanwhile, the larger fight over liquor was moving toward a showdown.

In 1880, Kansas voters approved a constitutional amendment prohibiting the manufacture and sale of intoxicating liquor. It took effect on May 1, 1881, making Kansas one of the earliest states to put prohibition into its constitution. But passing the law did not make liquor disappear. Enforcement became its own battle, with illegal saloons continuing to operate and courts repeatedly being asked to decide how the law should be applied.

Macke found himself right in the middle of that fight.

By 1882, prosecutors accused him of twelve illegal liquor sales and alleged that his brewery had been maintained as a “nuisance.” Macke was convicted, and what followed was a long legal battle involving appeals, imprisonment, and habeas corpus proceedings.

For Macke, this was no longer simply a question of running a business. He believed the prohibition laws were an injustice and spent much of the fortune he had accumulated fighting them.

Eventually, the law won.

Macke voluntarily closed the brewery after prohibition took effect, but he was left with a massive stock of beer he could no longer easily sell. The troubles that followed helped destroy the fortune he had built.

Macke died in 1900, but his brewery was still standing.

Just weeks later, The Emporia Gazette reported that the old building was nearly a wreck. Its windows were smashed, doors splintered, and its distinctive cupola had fallen to the ground. Inside the cellar were still barrels of rosin and enormous casks once used in the brewing process.

Then a group of local boys nearly burned the whole thing down.

They had been tearing apart the abandoned brewery and preparing a bonfire in the cellar when Mrs. Macke arrived. Authorities eventually had enough evidence to pursue eleven boys for the destruction.

The brewery that had once cost $30,000 and sold beer across Kansas was now little more than a crumbling reminder of an earlier Emporia.

Frederick Macke’s story is more than the story of a brewery. It is a story about the changing character of Lyon County and Kansas itself: a German immigrant building a successful business in a growing town, a community wrestling with the place of liquor, and a state moving from regulation toward outright prohibition.

For years, Macke’s brewery stood at the center of that conflict. And when prohibition finally brought the business to an end, Macke’s fight with the law became part of the story he left behind.

Source: The Emporia Gazette, October 26 and December 1, 1900; Emporia Daily Republican, October 26, 1900; Emporia Daily News, January 16, 1884, and May 27, 1879; The Emporia Ledger, August 27, 1874. Kansas prohibition context: Kansas Historical Society.

Before it was Emporia State University, it was a very different kind of school.Imagine Emporia in 1865. There’s no spraw...
08/11/2026

Before it was Emporia State University, it was a very different kind of school.

Imagine Emporia in 1865. There’s no sprawling university campus, no Welch Stadium, and no Memorial Union. Just a stone schoolhouse, 18 students, and one teacher doing it all.

That teacher was Lyman Kellogg, the first president of the Kansas State Normal School. The school had actually been established two years earlier, when the Kansas Legislature passed the enabling act on March 7, 1863.

From those humble beginnings, the Normal School grew remarkably fast. By 1889, it had become the largest normal school in the country, with students representing 43 Kansas counties and nine different countries.

And as the institution grew, its name changed along with it:

📜 1863–1923 | Kansas State Normal
The original Normal School, focused on preparing teachers.

📚 1923–1974 | Kansas State Teachers College
The school continued expanding its teacher-training mission.

🏫 1974–1977 | Emporia Kansas State College
The institution was broadening beyond its traditional role as a teachers college.

🎓 1977–Present | Emporia State University
The school officially became a university, reflecting its expanding academic mission.

But becoming a university wasn’t the end of the story. It was the beginning of a new chapter.

As Emporia State University, the institution continued expanding its academic programs, campus, and student life. New buildings appeared, new colleges and programs developed, and generations of students made their own memories in Emporia.

Today, the campus looks a long way from that stone schoolhouse of 1865. But the connection is still there.

From 18 students and one teacher to generations of Hornets making their mark across Kansas and beyond, Emporia State’s history is a story of growth, change, and a Kansas tradition of education that has lasted for more than 160 years.

Kansas State Normal. Kansas State Teachers College. Emporia Kansas State College. Emporia State University.

Different names. Different generations. One Kansas story.

Address

711 Commercial Street
Emporia, KS
66801

Opening Hours

Tuesday 10am - 4pm
Wednesday 10am - 4pm
Thursday 10am - 4pm
Friday 10am - 4pm
Saturday 10am - 4pm

Telephone

(620) 340-6310

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