Many of the lost Kansas communities depended on schools as the center of their communities. Communities rose up around schoolhouses, often simple one-room school houses. Today, the remnants of some of the schools is all that remains of the communities that once thrived around them. As the 19th century came to a close, much of the rural population gravitated toward urban centers, and the once vibrant communities lost support.

As a consequence, a common tale of these schoolhouse-communities is school district consolidation. The communities disintegrated as the rural districts were consolidated, as in the case of Wheaton, Kansas. Some towns like Wheaton were able to survive if other institutions like small businesses or churches could sustain the communities. Read the stories of these schoolhouse communities below to find out how they survived modernizing school systems!