![]() Around the springs he laid out his real estate possessions. He found springs of water on the high hill where Yates Center now stands. He found a lot of land to invest in Kansas at that time and took all of it that he could pay for. He was a tall, raw-boned, rail splitting old pioneer, who came to Kansas in the late 1860's after the Civil War to invest in the land. He was a brother of Governor Dick Yates, now famous as the war governor of Illinois. Abner Yates was a character of the pioneer sort. On the claim of Abner Yates, there were several springs of "living water", springs that did not go dry, springs that gave the land in that day, the only value it had. It was soon found that Defiance was also short of water. Kalida lost the county seat the next year to the town of Defiance, four miles east. Hauling water with ox teams for the town supply from the Neosho River was 13 miles and not practical. Kalida made the mistake of locating itself where these proceedures failed to get down to the water. The only method of digging wells was with picks, spades, shovels or gunpowder for blasting. The trouble with Kalida as a county seat was that it had no water. Kalida was located two miles southeast of where Yates Center now stands. At an election in 1873 the people of the county voted to take the county seat away from it and locate it at Kalida, a town of five hundred. Neosho Falls was accused of being proud and haughty because of its size and its assurance of being the metropolis in that part of the state. Neosho Falls was a town of 800 people, but it was located in the northeastern corner of the county. Before that time Neosho Falls had been the county seat. Yates Center was established in August 1875. If the people of Woodson County had not selected it as the county seat there would not have been a Yates Center. Yates Center holds the distinction of having been selected as the county seat before there was a house on the townsite or an inhabitant within its boundaries. Many towns are county seats because they fought for it, many because they stuffed the ballot boxes at the county seat election and some because they knew how to "handle" the county commissioners to get a special bill through the legislature. Yates Center is the only town in Kansas that was born to be the county seat.
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