The Native name for the river was Nepaholla, meaning "Water on the Hill" in reference to Waconda Spring which was located in the river valley.[5] In 1744, French explorers named the river Salmon, later corrupted into Solomon, after Edme Gatien de Salmon, a prominent colonial official of French Louisiana at the time.[5][6] Other names for the river include Mahkineohe, Riviere de Soucis, Solomons Creek, Wiskapalla River, and Solomons Fork.[2]
The Solomon River drainage basin covers an area of 6,835 square miles (17,703 km2).[9] Via the Smoky Hill, Kansas, and Missouri Rivers, it is part of the Mississippi River watershed.
Before American colonization, the Solomon River valley was a popular hunting and trapping area for the Plains Indians. Tribes that camped along the river included the Pawnee, Cheyenne, and Kansa. French explorer Etienne Venyard de Bourgmont visited the area in 1712, claiming it for France. Other French explorers returned in 1744 to survey the area and gave the river its name. After the French and Indian War, it became part of the Viceroyalty of New Spain. With the Louisiana Purchase in 1803, the region became part of the territory of the United States. In 1806, explorer Zebulon Pike led an expedition through the area, camping on the Solomon's North Fork near the site of modern Downs, Kansas. American settlers began to arrive in the 1850s, hunters and trappers initially followed by homesteaders. In 1861, the area became part of the state of Kansas.[5]
Willa Cather mentioned the Solomon River in her 1901 short story El Dorado: A Kansas Recessional. Her description says, "it is one of the most futile little streams under the sun, and never gets anywhere. Its sluggish current splits among the sand bars and buries itself in the mud until it literally dries up from weariness and ennui, without ever reaching anything."[11]
^Hall, Gwendolyn Midlo (1995). Africans in Colonial Louisiana: The Development of Afro-Creole Culture in the Eighteenth Century. Baton Rouge: LSU Press. p. 8.
Donald O. Whittemore, Determination of Waconda Lake Releases Needed for Diluting Saline Water in the Solomon River at Beloit for Municipal Water Supply. A Report Prepared for the Kansas Department of Agriculture, Division of Water Resources and Kansas Department of Health and Environment, Kansas Geological Survey. Open-File Report 2003-49.
Mandrak, Nicholas E., Changes in fish assemblages, Solomon River basin, Kansas: habitat alterations, extirpations, and introductions. Transactions of the Kansas Academy of Science, October 1, 2002
Martha B. Caldwell, Exploring the Solomon River Valley in 1869.
