Thayer, an incorporated town of Neosho county, is located in Chetopa township on the Atchison, Topeka & Santa Fe R. R. 14 miles southwest of Erie, the county seat. It has natural gas wells which yield gas in sufficient quantities for commercial purposes, 2 banks, a weekly newspaper (the News), telegraph and express offices, and an international money order postoffice with four rural routes. The population in 1910 was 542. The town was founded in 1870 by J. M. Walker, president of the railroad company. During the autumn of that year and the next winter hundreds came to the locality to get work on the railroad, which was then under construction. That winter the population reached 1,000, mostly men. The merchants who established stores at that time were H. L. Mills, George Weaver, W. W. Work, Holmes & Hindman, Fonts & Ingersoll, and a little later J. M. Halstead and the firm of Harris & Sax. H. M. Baldwin built a hotel and Thomas Thompson a hotel with a saloon. The first postoffice was at Prairie du Chien, hot it was moved to Thayer when the town was founded and A. I. Sherwood was the first postmaster. The first newspaper was the Thayer Criterion, started in 1871 by Perry & Olney.