[2] The county was created in 1873 and named in honor of George Meade, a Union general during the American Civil War.

[3] For millennia, the Great Plains of North America were inhabited by nomadic Native Americans.

Pearlette was settled shortly thereafter in 1879 by a company of sixteen families from Zanesville, Ohio led by John Jobling.

[4] The railroad first entered the country in 1887, ending a decade in which supplies had to be hauled from Dodge City.

[4] On August 24, 1874, in Meade County, Mochi, Medicine Water, and the other members of their band of Cheyenne massacred a surveying party led by Capt.

Oliver Francis Short, who had fought in the Union Army during the American Civil War.

The Dalton Gang Hideout and Museum was restored by the WPA in the 1930s and today is on the National Register of Historic Places.

[7] Like the rest of southwestern Kansas, Meade County was devastated by the Dust Bowl in the 1930s.

The last time a Democratic presidential candidate carried the county was in 1936, when Franklin D. Roosevelt won a landslide victory nationwide.