The county seat (1882, 4,462 feet), platted as a railroad grid town, was christened by a Burlington official's wife for her Ohio hometown. As the Greek word for high point or summit, Akron seemed appropriate for this division point on the crest of the divide between the South Platte and Republican rivers. Heavy 1880s emigration led to the opening of a U.S. Land Office here. A quarry and brick kiln helped local architecture progress beyond the sod house and canvas stage.
The 1890 prospectus of the Akron Town Site and Improvement Company projected Akron as neatly arranged like a New England village. The prospectus explained that with “more American NERVE and ENTERPRISE than can be found anywhere else, Akron only ten years hence will be a city of 50,000.… God has placed the elements of UNLIMITED mineral and agricultural wealth around us.” Akron's busted dreams are epitomized by the boarded-up, two-story Burlington Hotel (1915), northwest corner of Adams Street and Railroad Avenue, with a 1922 arcaded stucco addition to the original gabled boarding house.
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