At the end of the Reconstruction Period, Nicodemus, Kansas was founded in 1877. The community would soon become one of the most known communities in the nation formed by freed people heading west.

Nicodemus located on the plains in the northwest corner of the state along the Solomon River in Kansas.  The founders of the town include, W. H. Smith, Benjamin Carr, Jerry Allsap, the Reverend Simon Roundtree, Jeff Lenze, and William Edmonds, all originally from Lexington, Kentucky. They named the town Nicodemus after a African enslaved prince who purchased his freedom.  The founders envisioned Nicodemus as a town where settlers will have political freedom and economic opportunity.

In 1886 Nicodemus become a prosperous community surrounded by black-owned farms.  The town had two newspapers, the Nicodemus Enterprise and Nicodemus Western Cyclone. There was a drugstore, a bank, schoolhouse, three churches, and a general store. The general store was built by S.G. Wilson in 1879 as the first two story building in the town.

A prominent resident, Edwin P. McCabe, arrived 1878.  McCabe served the community as an attorney, land agent, and later county clerk.  In 1882 he became the highest-ranking African American elected official outside the South when he was elected the state auditor of Kansas.

Zachary Fletcher, became the first postmaster and first entrepreneur of the town. He created the St. Francis Hotel and livery stable. His wife Jenny Smith Fletcher was the town’s first schoolteacher.

Then by the late 1880s Nicodemus fell into decline.  In 1885 winter blizzards destroyed forty percent of the township’s wheat crop.  Two years later town leaders put sixteen thousand dollars in investment in three different railroads in hopes that one would extend its lines into or near their town but, all three railroads bypassed Nicodemus. Once  this happened the town stoped trying to lure newcomers especially after one of their most prominent citizen McCabe left in 1889.

In 1996 Nicodemus was made a National Historical site.