The Begining

Osborne City was founded by an advance scouting party bound for Kansas.  The party of 67 people left Reading and Lancaster Pennsylvania by train and five days later reached the end of the railroad at Waterville, Kansas.  There they formed a wagon train and over the next two weeks traversed the region from Waterville west to the Solomon River valley, then along the South Fork Solomon River until they reached the Bullock Brothers Ranch, a stockade that was the westernmost settler outpost at the time between Denver and Kansas City. On May 1, 1871 the remaining 38 men, one women and two boys laid out the new townsite. It was colony leader Colonel William Bear who suggested the twon be named Osborne City after Civil War veteran Vincent B. Osborne. Two hundred and fifty members of the Pennsylvania colony ventured to the newly settled town that September. 

In July of 1872 the colony officially disbanded and the Osborne City Town Company then formed to govern the community. The city was finally declared the permanent county seat in November 1872. In 1878, Osborne was declared a second class city with a mayor and city council form of government that continues today. By the mid-1890's the "City" part of the town name was dropped.