This Convention & Visitor's Bureau is operated by the Emporia Chamber of Commerce. It is open 9am to 5pm Monday-Friday. History of the City of Emporia from the Chamber of Commerce website:
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visit link)
"The town of Emporia was founded as a business venture in February 1857, according to well-documented town history. Kansas was a new territory embroiled in a bloody battle over slavery. Settlers were beginning to come into the territory when G.W. Brown, a young editor of The Herald of Freedom newspaper in Lawrence, saw a business opportunity to help himself and a change to help emigrants looking for a place to settle, according to a 1957 centennial-year history compiled by Robert Triplett. Many of the best town sites had already been settled by the winter of 1857, but Brown knew of one location that had not been taken. It had been described to him by a friend a few months earlier as “the loveliest site in the world for a town.”
The idea of a town company was born. Brown gathered together four other men – General G.W. Deitzler, a Lawrence resident; Lyman Allen and Columbus Hornsby, Lawrence merchants; and Preston B. Plumb, a Lawrence print foreman – and formed The Emporia Town Company.
Plumb, the only member of the company to eventually become a permanent resident, was selected because the men understood a basic principle of community development: they had to advertise their town in order for it to prosper. Plumb’s newspaper background was seen as essential for the new town. By June of that year he started Emporia’s first newspaper, The Kanzas News. It became the vehicle for early growth, and established the town’s newspaper tradition.
Emporia was founded on February 20, 1857, on an area of upland prairie, six miles above the junction of the Neosho and Cottonwood rivers. The site was in what was then Breckinridge County.
The Town Company had visions of a thriving and growing community. These hopes were so strong, Ted McDaniel wrote in “Our Land A History of Lyon County Kansas,” that the company decided to name the new town Emporia for a city-state in Northern Africa in ancient Carthage. Brown got the idea for the name while reading Rollins’ “History of the Carthaginians,” and noted the reference to Emporia, “a flourishing market center on the African coast and founded by the Greeks.”
Plumb would not begin to publish The Kanzas News for a few months, but Brown immediately began to promote the town through his Lawrence newspaper.
The promotion worked. The town began to grow and attract trade at once. Two thousand settlers came to Lyon County that year, according to Jacob Stotler, one of Emporia’s early settlers who wrote an early town history.
The original section of land was between Sixth and 18th Avenues and between West and East Streets of present day Emporia. Another half section was added the following year extending the south border to South Avenue. The town charter prohibited gambling and the sale of liquor on the town site. Thus, Emporia’s founders established not only a sound business, but the first prohibition town in the world, anticipating by 23 years the state prohibition amendment and by 61 years the 18th Amendment bringing national prohibition."
Information on the building occupied by the Visitor's Center:
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visit link)
"Commercial Building Status: Non-Contributing
Address: 719 N COMMERCIAL ST
Date of Construction: 1925 (Estimated); 2000 (Estimated)
Parcel ID: 192-10-0-30-29-010.00-0
Historic Function: Commerce/Trade - Specialty Store
Current Function: Commerce/Trade
Architectural Classification: Other
Description:
This one-part commercial block occupies a double-width lot and has non-historic EIFS cladding the primary (east) and rear (west) elevations. A small section of brick visible at the rear of the building suggests the historic wall material remains intact below the non-historic siding. The primary elevation fenestration includes, from south to north, a three-part display window, a recessed entrance, and two single-light fixed sash windows. A non-historic cornice spans the top of the parapet wall and a non-historic metal pent roof spans the full width of the primary elevation above the storefront.
"History:
This block remained minimally developed until the early twentieth century. In 1884, there was a roller skating rink on the north end, the E. F. Sprague Planing Mill and Steam Carpentry Shop on the south end, and a second-hand store in the middle. The roller skating rink was converted to the "Great Western Horse and Mule Market" between 1888 and 1893. It was later converted to a livery stable, a use it maintained until the years between 1911 and 1923. Although the demolition of the planing mill between 1884 and 1888 opened the block up for commercial development, it did not take its current form until the 1920s. This parcel remained vacant until the years between 1905 and 1911, when there was a one-story stoneworks on the south end and a one-story electrical supply shop on the north. The lots were not fully developed until the years between 1923 and 1929 when a stretch of one-story buildings was built here. The current building has been heavily modified with stucco and cornice.
Integrity:
This building is classified as a non-contributor because it has been heavily modified and no longer interprets the district’s period of significance. It appears that these modifications are irreversible."