Although founded in 1891 as a farming community, the town never grew to more than two hundred people until oil and natural gas were discovered nearby in 1926. In 1931 railroad service arrived. The sudden burst of prosperity was demonstrated by the construction of a new courthouse. More monumentally imposing, however, are the grain elevators of the Dumas Cooperative (see The Dumas Co-Op Elevators) beside the railroad at S. Twitchell Avenue and W. 5th Street. Built in 1947 by the Johnson Sampson Construction Company of Salina, Kansas, and the Hutchinson Foundry and Steel Company, the elevators supplanted an earlier generation of wood-framed, iron-clad structures, one of whose foundations remain. Grain elevators are the dominant man-made artifact in the region.
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