ATCHISON, a city of Kan., U.S.A., 42m. N.W. of Kansas City, on the Missouri river; the county seat of Atchinson county. It is served by the Burlington, the Rock Island, the Santa Fe, and the Missouri Pacific railways. The population was 12,63o in 1920, of whom 1,479 were negroes ; and 13,024 according to the Federal census of 193o.
The surrounding territory is an exceedingly rich agricultural section, and it contains deposits of the loess soil which is especially favourable to apples. The city has six large flour mills, and a large shipping trade in grain, flour, livestock, and lumber. Its 27 manufacturing establishments in 1927 had an output valued at $15,299,566. St. Benedict's college (Roman Catholic), estab lished in 1858, has an annual enrolment of about 35o students. The Atchison Globe, founded in 1878 by Edgar Watson Howe, and owned and edited by him until 1911, is one of the best-known papers of the middle west. Until his death in 1937, E. W. Howe continued his editorial influence in E. jl'. Howe's Monthly. Atchi son was founded in 1854 by a group of pro-slavery settlers, and was named after their leader, David Rice Atchison, a United States senator. It was chartered in 1858.