Atchison is a city and county seat of Atchison County, Kansas, United States, along the Missouri River. As of the 2020 census, the population of the city was 10,885. The city is named in honor of US Senator David Rice Atchison from Missouri and was the original eastern terminus of the Atchison, Topeka and Santa Fe Railway. Atchison is also the home of Benedictine College.

U.S. Route 59 is a north–south United States highway. A latecomer to the U.S. numbered route system, US 59 is now a border-to-border route, part of the NAFTA Corridor Highway System. It parallels U.S. Route 75 for nearly its entire route, never much more than 100 miles (160 km) away, until it veers southwest in Houston, Texas. Its number is out of place since US 59 is either concurrent with or entirely west of U.S. Route 71. The highway's northern terminus is 9 mi (14 km) north of Lancaster, Minnesota, at the Lancaster–Tolstoi Border Crossing on the Canada–US border, where it continues as Manitoba Highway 59. Its southern terminus is at the Mexico–US border in Laredo, Texas, where it continues as Mexican Federal Highway 85D.