The county seat was named for Richard Deighton, a surveyor from the adjacent Ness County. Deighton had studied and qualified as a civil engineer and as a result was much in demand by new settlers. The county was organized in 1886 and a compromise between the verbal warring residents of Watson on the west end of town and those of Dighton on the east, designated Watson the County seat with change of the name to Dighton. In 1958 his sons,Gail and Gerald, founded a grass seed company, operating out of their homes and their father's seed warehouse. Today the Sharp Brothers Seed Company is known as the world's largest native grass seed company.
Lane county has a long association with the cattle industry.
During the 1880's the Western Cattle Trail from Texas continued through Dodge City to Ogallala, Nebraska, passing through Lane County. When the early settlers learned that corn did not grow well in semiarid western Kansas they planted wheat. Today wheat is the county's main grain crop. With the introduction of irrigation in the latter 1940's and early 1950's, corn production has increased.