Four miles southeast of the village of Matfield Green in Chase County, Kansas--the heart of the Flint Hills--lies the abandoned settlement of Thurman. At the turn of the century Thurman was a prosperous farming and ranching settlement with fifty-one households, a post office, two general stores, a blacksmith shop, five schools, and a church. Today, only the ruins of Thurman remain.

Joseph Hickey uses Thurman to explore the settlement form of social organization, which--along with the village, hamlet, and small town--was a dominant feature of nineteenth- and early twentieth-century...