Bison, Kansas.
Typical home $71,853 (+6.1% in a year).
to buy the typical home at today's mortgage rate — +$234 (+163%) since Jan 2020.
- 1 year
- Up $4,162 +6%
- $67,690$71,853 since Sep 2025
- 5 years
- Up $15,620 +28%
- $56,233$71,853 since Sep 2021
Monthly payment to buy the typical home
Home value × that month's 30-year mortgage rate, 20% down, principal and interest. This is the line households feel: prices and rates compound each other.
- Bison$377
- Kansas$1,291
- United States$1,922
At the last five years' pace, a typical home here doubles in price every 14 years.
Typical home values in Bison, KS rose 6.1% over the past year — faster than the nation's +1.2%.
Living in Bison, Rush County, Kansas
Bison is a city of 179 people in Rush County. Half its households earn more than $65,822 a year and half less, against $59,970 across Rush County; 4% of its people live below the poverty line. 97% of its homes are lived in by their owners and 3% are rented. Unemployment in Rush County was 4.0% in August 2026, and the county had 4.1% fewer jobs in 2025 than the year before. The most people in Rush County work in schools and health care, then farming.
Written by AI Claude Sonnet 5.5 wrote this on 23 October 2026 from the figures here, a list of nearby places and what it knows. It can be wrong or out of date.
What it’s like
The place. Bison is a very small Kansas town where nearly every home is lived in by its owners, and typical home values are modest. Household incomes run higher than across Rush County as a whole, and few residents live below the poverty line. Few adults hold a four-year degree. Winters are cold, with January the coldest month, and summers are hot, with July the warmest. Snow falls through the winter, and a fair amount of rain and melted snow arrives over the year.
Work. Residents work mostly in schools, hospitals and social care, with others in farming, forestry and mining, in manufacturing, and in transport, warehouses and utilities. Across Rush County, some of the largest workplaces are Rush County Memorial Hospital, the Otis-Bison Schools district and KBK Industries, a maker of tanks and storage. Unemployment in the county has held steady over the past year, while the number of jobs there fell somewhat last year.
Things to do. The Kansas Barbed Wire Museum is a short drive away. Farther afield, Fort Larned National Historic Site is a protected area worth a longer drive, and the Pawnee River is a river reached the same way. The Sternberg Museum of Natural History is another museum within a longer drive.
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- 11%of adults have a degree
- 4%below the poverty line
What people in Rush County work in
Employed residents by industry, from the Census survey. Rush County had 1,029 jobs in 2025, 4.1% fewer than the year before (Bureau of Labor Statistics).
Weather through the year
Coldest in January, with highs near 43° and lows near 16°; warmest in July, with highs near 92° and lows near 64°. About 14 inches of snow and 27 inches of rain and melted snow a year.
Average daily high and low, 1991–2020, at the Bison 3NW weather station, 4 miles away (NOAA).
Largest workplaces in Rush County
- KBK IndustriesTanks, storage, plastics or fiberglass, manufacturing104
- Rush County Memorial HospitalCritical access hospital84FTE
- Locust Grove VillageNursing homes70
- LaCrosse SchoolsSchool district49FTE
- Otis-Bison SchoolsSchool district45FTE
- Messer North AmericaIndustrial gases manufacturing37
- Flame EngineeringManufacture propane torches25
Staff on average in 2025, as each workplace reported it to OSHA with its injury records: 5 workplaces with 20 or more staff, 276 people in all across the county; Bison has none of its own. Hospitals come from their Medicare cost reports (CMS, 2023) and school districts from the Common Core of Data (NCES, 2023–24); FTE marks full-time equivalent staff. Not listed: many offices and banks, which need not report to OSHA; military bases, whose staff OPM withholds; and, in about half the states, city and county governments.
Natural hazards
- HailVery high
- Strong windVery high
- TornadoesVery high
- Winter weatherVery high
- Cold wavesVery high
- DroughtRelatively high
FEMA’s National Risk Index (December 2025) rates the risk each natural hazard poses to the people, buildings and farms in Bison’s census tracts, against the rest of the country; all of them together, relatively high. It is meant for planning, not a substitute for a local risk assessment or a flood map: FEMA’s index.
From the U.S. Census Bureau’s 2020 census and its American Community Survey (2020–2024 five-year estimates), and the Bureau of Labor Statistics. A survey, so each figure has a margin of error, and figures it is not sure of are left out. More on Rush County.
Bison home values
Zillow measures a city over its municipal boundary. Against the state and national figures, mid-tier homes, smoothed and seasonally adjusted.
- Bison$71,853
- Kansas$246,055
- United States$366,157
When this market ran hot
Each cell is that month's year-on-year home-value growth. Read left to right, top row is the latest year — the 2021–22 band is the boom.
Zip codes with a Bison address
A different geography, not a breakdown. The figure above covers the municipality; these zips cover everywhere the Post Office calls Bison — often including townships beyond the city limits. Both come straight from Zillow, and they are not expected to average out.