The famed unification of four towns to create the city of Chanute is a well-known tale that is actually a little more complicated than most know, according to Chanute history expert Jim Whaley.
“I discovered in my research there are some differences in the stories told about the formation of Chanute,” Whaley said. “The facts stay the same, but the circumstances surrounding those facts are different.”
Whaley’s research yielded a different account of the four towns and how one of those, Alliance, came to be as a result of other infighting amongst the local communities competing for the chance to be the seat of Neosho County. In 1870, the towns of Tioga and New Chicago incorporated themselves within a day of each other, and a fierce rivalry began.
(Read more: The Chanute Tribune)