Osborne Map
Osborne is a city in and the county seat of Osborne County, Kansas, United States. As of the 2010 census, the city population was 1,431.
Settlers from southeastern Pennsylvania founded Osborne City in May 1871. They named the settlement after Vincent B. Osborne, a Union Army veteran of the American Civil War, same as the county. Osborne City became the permanent county seat in November 1872. A district judge officially proclaimed it a city in May 1873, but the townspeople failed to legally organize a government. Five years later, a second attempt was successful, and the settlement incorporated as a city in 1878. “City” was dropped from its name by the mid-1890s.
Osborne is located at 39°26?26?N 98°41?50?W / 39.44056°N 98.69722°W / 39.44056; -98.69722 (39.440651, -98.697118), at an elevation of 1,552 feet (473 m). It lies on the north side of the South Fork Solomon River in the Smoky Hills region of the Great Plains. The Osborne Canal, part of the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation's Webster Unit Project, runs east along the northern edge of the city. Located at the intersection of U.S. Route 281 and U.S. Route 24 in north-central Kansas, Osborne is approximately 134 miles (217 km) northwest of Wichita, 219 miles (353 km) west-northwest of Kansas City, and 339 miles (546 km) east of Denver.
Nearby cities include Alton, Tipton, Cawker City, Gaylord, Portis.