Never heard of it? I'm not surprised. It's located about 130 miles south and slightly west of Kansas City Mo. I knew it well when I was a kid because my father's mother lived there and many were the weekends that we set off to go see Grandma. Daddy's sister, Vera, and her husband and two daughters lived on a desolate farm outside of town. Vera named it "Land's End" and she wasn't kidding.
Today Les and Roberta, children of one of Vera and Floyd's daughters still live there with their families. In fact, Les is the mayor of Yates Center!
The town is the self-proclaimed "Hay Capitol of the World."
The 2010 census said that 1,417 people live there, down from 1900's 10,022. Today 95.3 per cent of the residents are white; 0.4 per cent are African-American. Oh - and there are four registered sex offenders.
Why am I writing about Yates Center? It popped up in an article in the very glossy Hearst publication "Town & Country" which was founded in 1846. Billing itself as the magazine of "luxury style, travel and leisure," they ran an article in the August 2012 issue on small town newspapers and they included the Yates Center News.
I couldn't have been more surprised. I must say that if they wanted a small town, they couldn't have done better than Yates Center.
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