Silkville | |
 Silkville's school house | |
  | |
| Location | Williamsburg Township, Franklin County, Kansas |
|---|---|
| Nearest city | Williamsburg, Kansas |
| Coordinates | 38°27′00″N 95°29′21″W / 38.45000°N 95.48917°W |
| Area | 6 acres (2.4 ha) |
| Built | 1870 |
| NRHP reference No. | 72000504 |
| Added to NRHP | December 15, 1972 |
Silkville is a ghost town in Williamsburg Township, Franklin County, Kansas, United States.[1] It was located approximately 2 miles southwest of Williamsburg at the intersection of U.S. 50 highway and Arkansas Road.[2]
The settlement was founded in the late 1800s by a Frenchman named Ernest de Boissière, who believed in Fourierian utopian socialism. Silkville was a sericulture-based settlement, and remuneration was based what each settler could produce. Silkville's silk was praised at the Centennial Exposition in Philadelphia in 1876, but loss of settlers and difficulty in selling the silk resulted in the settlement's collapse. Today, only a few buildings remain.