After the Chicago, Kansas and Nebraska Railway built through the area in 1888, a townsite
sprang up and platted in 1888.[2] The town was named Arkalon for Arkalon Tenney, the father of the first
postmaster of the town, Hosea Eugene Tenney.[3] A post office called Arkalon was established in 1888 and remained in operation until 1929.[4]
The Arkalon News newspaper was published from April 1888 until December 1892.[3] In 1891, a one-room school house was opened for children.[3][5] A large stockyard was erected for shipping cattle to market. While the nearby river held promise for the early settlers, they soon found that the bottom land next the Cimarron River was too sandy for farming and flooded too often. By the 1920s most of the early settlers had left, leaving only the railroad and stockyards behind.[3]
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