Abandoned Towns
The stone Silkville schoolhouse in a pasture

Farm and ranch town · Mill, lumber and company town

Silkville

A French aristocrat's utopian colony that made prize-winning silk on the Kansas prairie in the 1870s. A stone schoolhouse and two barns survive on what is now a private cattle ranch.

38°27′00″N 95°29′21″W · ≈1,160 ft

Photo: Bhall87 at en.wikipedia, Wikimedia Commons, CC BY 3.0

Private

Silkville is part of Silkville Ranch, owned by the Bichelmeyer family and run by Bichelmeyer Land & Cattle. The stone barns are in use as horse stables and equipment storage. We found no published visitor access or tours. Stay on public roads, and don't enter without the owners' permission.

Overview

Silk on the prairie

The Santa Fe railway's sign board at Silkville, circa 1870–1890
The Santa Fe railway's sign board at Silkville, circa 1870–1890 · Photo: H. Killam, Wikimedia Commons, Public domain

Silkville lies on the open prairie about two miles southwest of Williamsburg. It was the project of Ernest Valeton de Boissière, a French aristocrat whose Fourierist politics put him on the wrong side of Napoleon III. In 1869 he bought more than 3,000 acres here and set out to build a colony where all would share the work and the rewards.

The colony began in 1870. De Boissière planted 8,000 mulberry trees for silkworms and built a three-story, 60-room stone chateau with a library of about 2,500 books. Members, mostly French, paid $200 to join in return for lodging, food and an equal share of the profits. The Kansas Historical Society says the looms turned out 300 yards of material a day, and at the 1876 Centennial Exposition the silk was ranked with that of France, Italy and Japan.

The silk did not pay. Cheaper Asian fabric undercut it, and de Boissière refused to use cheap American dyes. The colony turned to butter, cheese and cattle, and members drifted away. He left for France in 1892 and died in 1894. The property went to the Odd Fellows for an orphanage, but they gave it up, and fire gutted the chateau in 1916.

Timeline

A colony of silk and stone

  1. Ernest Valeton de Boissière, a French aristocrat and former army engineer, arrives in the United States.
  2. He buys 3,156 acres southwest of Williamsburg from the Kansas Educational Association of the Methodist Episcopal Church. Wikipedia gives 3,000 to 3,500 acres.
  3. The colony is founded, and 8,000 mulberry trees go in to feed silkworms.
  4. The colony produces its first cocoons.
  5. Silkville silk is ranked alongside French, Italian and Japanese silk at the Centennial Exposition in Philadelphia.
  6. De Boissière gives up Silkville and returns to France. He dies there in 1894.
  7. The Odd Fellows take the property for an orphanage, then give it up. After a long court case it passes to Topeka lawyers.
  8. Fire guts the 60-room chateau.
  9. Silkville is listed on the National Register of Historic Places.

What's here

Three stone buildings on a ranch

The stone schoolhouse, 2006
The stone schoolhouse, 2006 · Photo: Bhall87 at en.wikipedia, Wikimedia Commons, CC BY 3.0

Three stone structures survive: the schoolhouse and two barns. One barn was the cocoonery, cut down to a single story after a tornado took its upper floor. A modern house stands over the west end of the chateau ruins and reuses some of its stone. The ranch now runs cattle on about 4,000 acres, and the barns serve as stables and storage.

The historic maps below run from an 1885 sheet, drawn while the colony still operated, to 1990.

  • Stone schoolhouse
  • Former cocoonery (stone barn)
  • Second stone barn
  • Chateau stone in a modern house
USGS topographic map with the Silkville label beside Arkansas Road
USGS The National Map, topo. The Silkville label sits beside Arkansas Road.
Aerial view of the Silkville area: a crossroads with a few trees and buildings among pasture and cropland
Aerial imagery, same area.

Historic maps

Silkville on USGS maps, 1885–1990

Crops from the USGS Historical Topographic Map Collection, centered on the townsite. Each sheet shows what surveyors mapped that year; compare them with today's topo and aerial on this page.

USGS topographic map around Silkville, 1885
Garnett sheet, 1885, 1:125,000 · U.S. Geological Survey, public domain · catalog record

Map & directions

Getting there

Ottawa is the closest city, about half an hour northeast on I-35. From Kansas City the drive is I-35 most of the way. Both leave the interstate at Williamsburg and follow Old Highway 50 to Arkansas Road.

USGS topographic map of the country between Ottawa and Silkville with both routes drawn on it

Base map: USGS The National Map (public domain). Routes: OSRM on © OpenStreetMap contributors data (ODbL), computed October 2026. Times assume dry roads.

From downtown Ottawa19.1 miabout 28 min
  1. Head south on South Main Street, which becomes Princeton Circle Drive, to the I-35 on-ramp.3.0 mi
  2. Take I-35 / US 50 southwest.12.3 mi
  3. Exit and turn left onto John Brown Road, which becomes North Dane Avenue in Williamsburg.1.1 mi
  4. Turn right onto South William Street, which becomes Old Highway 50, to Arkansas Road.2.4 mi
Google Maps directionsApple MapsOpenStreetMap

Road and safety notes

  • The buildings are on a private, working ranch. Stay on public roads.
  • Williamsburg is the nearest town; Ottawa has full services.

Photos

Silkville in photos

Visitor reports

Been to Silkville?

Been there lately? Tell the next visitor what you found: whether you could get in, the state of the road and what's still standing. Photos are welcome. We read every report before it appears here.

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Nearby

Other sites near Silkville

Straight-line distance from the townsite to other mapped sites in our Kansas index.

Sources

Sources and credits

  1. Wikipedia, "Silkville, Kansas", retrieved October 2026: de Boissière's background, land purchase, dates, chateau and library, 1916 fire, National Register listing, surviving buildings.
  2. Legends of Kansas, "Silkville" (2023): acreage, mulberry trees, first cocoons, three-story chateau, the Odd Fellows and the court case, location.
  3. Kansas Historical Society, Kansapedia: de Boissière's arrival in 1852, members' terms, the looms' output, the Centennial ranking, the 1892 sale.
  4. Bichelmeyer Land & Cattle, as of October 2026: current owners, ranch size, use of the stone barns.
  5. Elevation from a USGS 3D Elevation Program point query. Routes: OSRM on OpenStreetMap data, October 2026. Status checked against the sources above on October 19, 2026.

Photo and map credits