Happy 198th Birthday Cyrus K. Holliday

One of the most influential Kansans of the 19th century was a man named Cyrus K. Holliday and without him Kansas would not be what it is today. He was born Cyrus Kurtz Holliday on April 3, 1826, near Carlisle, Pennsylvania to Charles and Mary Holliday. He was the youngest of seven children. His father died in 1830 when Cyrus was just four years old. Following his father death his mother moved with her children to Wooster, Ohio to live with her late husband’s sister. Cyrus attended public school and then returned to Pennsylvania to attend Allegheny College in Meadville. He graduated in 1852 and though he planned to practice law he was hired by the George W. Howard Company which was a local contracting business involved with railroad construction. He worked as a partner in the company and as such he received railroad bonds which ended up being worth $20,000. He married Mary Dillon Jones on June 11, 1854, and together they had two children, Lillie Holliday, born March 8, 1855, and Charles King Holliday, born February 12, 1859. Using his railroad bond money he settled in Lawrence, KS in October 1854. Shortly after he wrote: “The Creator might have made a better country than the Kansas; but so far as my knowledge extends, he certainly never did.”

His wife would join him in Kansas after the birth of their children. He was convinced that Kansas would enter the Union as a free state and established a free state settlement farther west on the Kansas River: Topeka. The Topeka Association was formed in late December 1854. Holliday was elected its first and only President. He also played a principal role in founding the Free State Party. In 1855 he supervised a free-state regiment during the Wakarusa War and for this he was given the honorary and unofficial title of Colonel, a title he would carry for the remainder of his life. This same year he was elected to his first of many terms as Mayor of Topeka. During the Civil War he served as Adjutant General for Kansas. In this position he recruited soldiers and ensured that supplies were sent to the front. He helped found the Kansas Republican Party and served in the territorial and state legislatures. On February 7, 1862, Cyrus donated 20 acres of land for the new state capital building. He also served as president of the Excelsior Coke and Gas Company and of the Merchants National Bank of Topeka.

His most notable accomplishment was the establishing of the Atchison, Topeka, and Santa Fe Railroad. In 1859 he wrote a charter for the railroad which would run from Atchison, KS southwest along the Santa Fe Trail. He then wrote and secured the passage of a bill through the Territorial Legislature for the railroad. He had gotten congressionally authorized land grants and in 1868 he broke ground. He ran for Congress as a Republican in 1874 but lost that election. He served as the president of the Kansas Historical Society in 1891. In the 1890s he had a wide range of interests, one of which was in developing the natural resources of Kansas. During this time, he mistakenly believed that Ellis and Trego Counties in central Kansas had mineral deposits of tin, zinc, and gold. In 1899 his son Charles founded the now extinct town of Smoky Hill City in Ellis County. Soon their beliefs of mineral deposits in this part of Kansas were proven wrong. Cyrus K. Holliday passed away on March 29, 1900, at the age of 73 from an affliction of the heart, something that he had suffered from for many years. He is buried in the Topeka Cemetery. Eight years later his wife Mary passed on July 19, 1908, and was laid to rest next to her husband.

Today Cyrus’s legacy lives on through the numerous places that are named after him, like the Cyrus Hotel, and the Cyrus K. Holliday Apartments. His two greatest legacies, the Santa Fe Railroad and the Kansas State Capital building are the most enduring. To honor this great Kansan the Burlington Northern Santa Fe Railroad unveiled a statue of Cyrus K. Holliday in June of 2016. The statue is located at a pocked park near the Northwest corner of 10th and S. Kansas Avenue. Cyrus K. Holliday changed the Kansas landscape and pushed the state towards the future.