A Dangerous Sport

By "The Cowboy" Jim Gray

Emporia, Kan. was all abuzz Friday morning June 2, 1871. At 9 p.m. the previous evening Dr. Morris, Lyon County coroner, was summoned to the banks of the Cottonwood River southeast of town to hold an inquest over the body of a murdered man. Dr. Morris traveled to a popular campground about three quarters of a mile below Soden’s Mill.

W. T. Soden established the Emporia Water Mills, more familiarly known as Soden’s Mill, on the Cottonwood River immediately south of Emporia in 1860. The mill could produce 200 bushels of flour a day. The old main building was hand-built with timbers showing the scars of the craftsman’s axe, hewed from trees that had once graced the banks of the Cottonwood River.

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