Colby, Kansas

Buildings and businesses the archive holds for this place. Each opens its own page, with the source record it came from.

On the National Register 4 records

• Colby City Halllisted 2003
• St. Thomas Hospitallisted 2013
• Thomas County Courthouselisted 1976
• Colby Community High Schoollisted 2003

Colby grew from 5,387 to 5,570 between 2010 and 2020. These are the recorded population figures Wikidata holds for this place, reached through the Geographic Names Information System number this page is keyed on rather than by name, so they belong to this place and not to another of the same name. Most are census counts, but not all are: an early figure may be a founding or settlement estimate, and an estimate published within five years of a census is left out. The change column is computed, and is left blank where more than 20 years separate a figure from the one before it, because a gap that long is not a change between two counts.

Matched by testing this settlement's coordinate against the published boundary of every sheet in the United States Geological Survey's historical collection. Each opens the scanned sheet at the Survey.

• 1943 USGS Colby quadrangle1:62500, 2 printings
• 1954 USGS Goodland quadrangle1:250000
• 1956 USGS Goodland quadrangle1:250000
• 1957 USGS Goodland quadrangle1:250000, 2 printings
• 1967 USGS Colby quadrangle1:24000
• 1985 USGS Goodland quadrangle1:100000, 2 printings

Regional context, not property-specific evidence. The federal wildfire occurrence database lists 15 fires within 5 miles of Colby between 2015 and 2018, burning about 50 acres in total. None started naturally. 1 was recorded as arson. Distance is straight-line from the map coordinates, so a fire counted here may appear on a neighbouring settlement's page as well.

The most recent of them, most recent first, with the day each was reported and the service that recorded it.

Settlements close enough to share some of these fires:

• Levant
• Mingo

Every fire recorded in Thomas County

Regional context, not property-specific evidence. The National Weather Service names Colby in 308 storm reports between 1993 and 2025: 150 hail, 119 thunderstorm wind, 16 flash flood, 11 tornado. The reports record 6 injuries. Each account below is quoted exactly as the forecast office filed it, from the NOAA Storm Events Database, and each date opens the federal record of that event.

Every storm recorded in Thomas County

The eight closest, with where each one stands in the county. Distances are straight-line, computed from the Geographic Names Information System coordinates.

Matched on this settlement's Geographic Names Information System number rather than its name, so it cannot be a different place of the same name in another state.

This settlement is recorded in the Geographic Names Information System as feature 471203. The sheet list is computed by point-in-boundary test against the United States Geological Survey's historical topographic inventory. Both are works of the United States government and carry no copyright under 17 U.S.C. 105.

Wildfire. Short, Karen C. 2022. Spatial wildfire occurrence data for the United States, 1992-2020 [FPA_FOD_20221014]. 6th Edition. Fort Collins, CO: Forest Service Research Data Archive. https://doi.org/10.2737/RDS-2013-0009.6 Collected with United States Government funding and usable without additional permissions or fees.

Storms. NOAA National Centers for Environmental Information, Storm Events Database https://www.ncei.noaa.gov/stormevents/ A work of the United States government, no copyright under 17 U.S.C. 105. Narratives are quoted verbatim from the National Weather Service report and are not edited or summarised.