One of the original counties organized by the first Territorial Legislature in 1855, Riley County is situated in northeast Kansas. Prior to the opening of the land to white settlers, the area comprising Riley County was part of the Kanza Indian Reservation, though by 1854 the natives had been moved.  

A number of historic roads came through Riley County. Colonel John C. Fremont on his second expedition in 1843 followed the rivers and streams to the present site of Fort Riley. The Leavenworth and Pike's Peak Express crossed the county by way of the fort, which was also a station on the Butterfield Overland Dispatch route, and the south branch of the California Trail ran through by Manhattan.

The first white men in the area were at Fort Riley, established in 1853, at the junction of the Smoky Hill and Republican Rivers, to protect travelers along the many trails through the area. The first white man to settle in the county was Samuel Dyer of Tennessee, who operated a government ferry at Juniata or Dyer’s Crossing on the Big Blue River, a few miles above the present city of Manhattan, in the latter part of 1853. This settlement was at the crossing of the Fort Leavenworth to Fort Riley road. In 1854, Reverend Charles E. Blood of New Hampshire came to Juniata and began missionary labors. In the same year Thomas Reynolds settled in what is now Ogden Township. His house was used as a polling place for the first election, which was held in that year, when 40 votes were polled for delegate to Congress, the majority of them for the free-state candidate.

The county derived its name from Fort Riley, and the first capital of the territory was at Pawnee, just east of the military reservation two miles from the fort, where the old building used as the first capitol still stands. Dr. William A. Hammond, Captain Nathaniel Lyon, Robert Klotz, Robert Wilson, and several others had settled there before the legislature met on July 2, 1855. When the site of the capitol was declared to be illegally situated on Indian reservation land, it closed down in August 1855.

A number of other towns also quickly developed, including Ogden, which got most of its initial settlers from the defunct Pawnee. The Ogden settlement was comprised mostly of pro-slavery advocates as did the original town or Randolph, originally settled by Gardner Randolph came to Kansas from Tennessee to build a plantation home near the mouth of Fancy Creek. All the other towns settled in Riley County during the territorial years would be settled primarily with people who were Free-State advocates.

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