{"id":408,"slug":"army-city-fort-riley-kansas","story":[{"heading":null,"paragraphs":["Army City was a five-year town built entirely on the First World War. When the army raised Camp Funston on the Fort Riley reservation in 1917 to train the divisions going to France, the land just north of the cantonment — already platted as Kellyville — sold to developer H. P. Powers, who renamed it Army City and auctioned lots to anyone willing to build a business on them. A. D. Jellison of the Jellison Trust Company financed much of it and laid out streets named for military rank and famous soldiers: Major and Captain streets, General Allen, Lincoln Avenue.","At its height the town held about three thousand people and offered soldiers what Junction City and Manhattan were too far away to provide — movie houses called the Orpheum and the Hippodrome with outsized seating, a YMCA, a YWCA, church services on Sundays. It was a real incorporated municipality, not a camp appendage."]},{"heading":"Demobilization, applied to a map","paragraphs":["Army City's single customer was wartime population. When the camps emptied after 1918, the town emptied with them — the Kansas Historical Society records the end in a headline the file could not improve on: 'Taps Has Sounded for Army City.' In September 1922, six of the eight remaining residents voted to surrender the town charter, five years after the first lots sold. The archive keeps it as the cleanest kind of ghost town: a municipality born of a mobilization, dead of demobilization, its streets long since folded back into the ground around Fort Riley."]}],"name":"Army City","aliases":["Kellyville"],"type":"GHOST_TOWN","type_label":"Ghost Town","cats":["GHOST_TOWN"],"groups":["ghost-towns"],"desc":"Founded in 1917 to serve Camp Funston, the settlement lost its wartime clientele after 1918; remaining residents surrendered its charter in September 1922.","full_desc":"Army City is a ghost town in Fort Riley, Kansas, founded in 1917. Founded in 1917 to serve Camp Funston, the settlement lost its wartime clientele after 1918; remaining residents surrendered its charter in September 1922. The archive files it under ghost towns. The dossier holds 1 documented fact — the record is history-forward, no paranormal claims on file. Access details are unverified — research before visiting.","address":null,"city":"Fort Riley","county":null,"state":"Kansas","postal":null,"region":"Midwest","lat":39.106344,"lon":-96.812547,"coord_kind":"CITY","status":"UNKNOWN","access":"UNKNOWN","access_notes":null,"ownership":null,"website":null,"phone":null,"year_built":null,"year_opened":1917,"year_closed":1922,"year_demolished":null,"designation":null,"current_use":null,"research_notes":"Historic site north of Camp Funston, not the camp itself. Current parcel and military-reservation boundaries unverified; no access implied.","stage":"SOURCE_RESEARCH","quality":{"level":"MEDIUM","score":55,"dims":{"location_confidence":0.75,"identity_confidence":0.65,"historical_confidence":0.8,"source_quality":1,"paranormal_claim_provenance":null,"coordinate_confidence":0,"current_access_confidence":0,"freshness":0.65}},"claims":[],"history":[{"description":"Founded in 1917 to serve Camp Funston, the settlement lost its wartime clientele after 1918; remaining residents surrendered its charter in September 1922. A ghost town's file is unusual: the emptiness itself is documented, and this entry is part of that record. This belongs to the verified spine of the entry, the layer everything else is measured against. The detail is preserved in 'Army City, Kansas'. Documented ground is what separates this file from pure legend — this is part of it.","evidence":"HISTORICALLY_VERIFIED","date_start":null,"date_end":null,"confidence":null,"source":{"name":"Army City, Kansas","url":"https://www.kansashistory.gov/kansapedia/army-city-kansas/11969","publisher":"Kansas Historical Society","type":"GOVERNMENT","authority":1}}],"legends":[],"entities":[],"events":[],"investigations":[],"encounters":[],"media":[],"persons":[],"visitor":{"tour_availability":"Verify before visiting","notes":"Access details are unverified; research before visiting.","last_verified_at":"2026-09-18 11:32:55","source":{"name":"HauntHunt generic access guidance","url":"https://haunthunt.com/about#access-guidance","publisher":"HauntHunt editorial","type":"DIRECTORY","authority":2}},"sources":[{"name":"Army City, Kansas","url":"https://www.kansashistory.gov/kansapedia/army-city-kansas/11969","publisher":"Kansas Historical Society","type":"GOVERNMENT","authority":1}],"conflicts":[],"wiki":null,"counts":{"claims":0,"history":1,"legends":0,"entities":0,"sources":1}}