Edmond Formerly Called “Summit”

On July 4, 1884, Congress granted the Southern Kansas Railway Company (whose securities were owned by the Atchison, Topeka & Santa Fe Railroad Company) the right to lay a rail line from Arkansas City, Kansas, south through the Unassigned Lands. In 1886, the Southern Kansas Railway had hired hundreds of construction workers from Caldwell, Arkansas City and the surrounding areas. What little survives of railway documentation connected to the town of Edmond, an internal Santa Fe publication indicates that railroad employees carried time cards as they traveled into Edmond, although there was no station or town at the time. The article featured below, published in a January 1911 issue of the Santa Fe Employees’ Magazine, proves that employees charged with building the rail knew Edmond by its former designation: “Summit.”

The name Summit may have been Edmond’s designation because of its physical attributes. Clearly, Edmond was not the highest point between Kansas and Texas as some had declared. This record of local elevations indicates that Edmond was not the highest site between the Cimarron and North Canadian Rivers as some early historical records stated.

1925 profile of the Oklahoma Division
The Santa Fe’s Big Three by S. Kip Farrington, Jr. Page 139

Research collected by John B. Moore, Jr., 2012.

MaCrae, Albert, Managing Editor, Santa Fe Employes'[sic] Magazine, Railway Exhchange, Chicago, January 1911, Volume 5, No. 2, page 95.

Crowder, Dr. James L., Historic Edmond: An Illustrated History, Lammert Publications, San Antonio, 2000, pg 7.