The state of Kansas is roughly rectangular in shape, covering approximately 400 mi/640 km east to west and 200 mi/320 km north to south. In eastern Kansas, the varied landscape includes the glacial hills of the northeast, the Ozark Plateau of the southeast and the subtly rolling tallgrass prairie of the Flint Hills. The land rises and flattens to meet the eastern slope of the Rocky Mountains in Colorado. Farms and ranches comprise most of the countryside.
The first tribes who lived in the land that would become Kansas survived largely by hunting, with the bison as their favorite game. This way of life continued for centuries but may have ended several hundred years before European contact: A drought in the 1200s may have forced many Native Americans to move elsewhere. When the first Spanish explorer, Francisco Coronado, arrived 300 years later, the tribes in the area were farmers. This changed once the Spaniards introduced horses to the area. Once they had access to horses, the tribes of the Great Plains again became nomadic buffalo hunters.
After Coronado and a later Spanish expedition led by Juan de Onate in 1601, few Europeans ventured into Kansas for the next 200 years. Of those, most were French traders. When the U.S. gained control of the area with the Louisiana Purchase in 1803, settlement began to take hold. During the 1820s, the Santa Fe Trail was opened across Kansas to allow trade with the Spanish settlement in what is now New Mexico. Wagon trains continued to follow that route, and the Oregon Trail, through the 1880s.
In 1854, Kansas became a territory with passage of the Kansas-Nebraska Act, which also stipulated that citizens of the territory would vote on whether or not to permit slavery. Kansas was soon embroiled in the bitter conflict that would ultimately lead to the Civil War. People on both sides of the issue flooded into the territory in hopes of controlling the state's destiny, and violence broke out.
"Bleeding Kansas" became the territory's nickname as armed bands staged vicious attacks on their opponents. Among the combatants was John Brown who, along with his sons, murdered five pro-slavery men on the Pottawatomie River. Finally, in 1859, the abolitionists won out, and Kansas became a free state two years later.
Residents continued to suffer from the slavery controversy, however. After the Civil War began in 1861, the state contributed more soldiers who would die in the war than any other Union state, per capita. In 1863, a pro-Confederate force led by William Quantrill sacked the town of Lawrence, which was a hotbed of abolitionist sentiment.
Following the Civil War and the introduction of the railroad, Kansas became the destination of great longhorn cattle drives north from Texas. Such celebrated cow towns as Abilene and Wichita became widely known. The Homestead Act and the desire for free land also attracted people to Kansas. More than 20,000 African Americans, popularly known as Exodusters, moved to Kansas from the South in the 1870s seeking land. Many African-American townships were settled during this time, of which only tiny Nicodemus remains.
The state continued to grow in spite of various problems: a plague of grasshoppers in 1874, Native American attacks on homesteaders and the activities of such outlaws as the Dalton Gang. Today, Kansas has settled down, but farming and cattle ranching remain two of its economic mainstays: It's the largest producer of wheat in the U.S. and one of the highest producers of beef. The aviation industry is a strong presence in Kansas, as are the natural gas and petroleum industries.
The main attractions in Kansas include cowboy heritage, pioneer history, military forts, Dodge City, Abilene, vast colorful skies, the Santa Fe Trail, the Flint Hills, amber waves of grain, Wichita, the history of space flight and auto racing.
Travelers who prefer a wide-open, leisurely, uncrowded atmosphere to the urban sprawl of major metropolitan areas will enjoy their visit to Kansas. Those travelers who feel that long-distance driving is tedious may find the state less to their liking.
Because early settlers found much of Kansas too hard to plow—there was only a thin layer of soil over a layer of flint—Kansas boasts the largest native tallgrass prairie in the nation.
Cheyenne Bottoms is the country's largest interior marsh—about 45% of the North American shorebird population stops there during spring migration.
The Santa Fe, Chisholm and Oregon trails all passed through what is now Kansas. A more recent overland route—Route 66—also passes through southeast Kansas. After President Dwight D. Eisenhower—a native Kansan—signed the Federal Aid Highway Act in 1956 for a national system of highways, Kansas was the first state to open an interstate highway (a portion of Interstate 70).
The Davis Memorial in a cemetery in Hiawatha contains 11 life-size carved stone sculptures depicting a couple at various points during their lives.
A marker for the geographic center of the contiguous United States is about 2 mi/3 km northwest of Lebanon. The geodetic center (an important reference point in precise mapmaking) is about 40 mi/65 km south of there on a private ranch.
In 1905, two University of Kansas professors discovered that Kansas had a plentiful supply of helium among its rich natural gas reserves. At the time, helium had only limited uses, but during World War II, helium-filled blimps played a major role in protecting Allies against German submarines. Kansas is the nation's top producer of helium.
Underground salt caverns, 650 feet below the earth’s surface near Hutchinson, are used to store Hollywood films, as well as important documents, papers and other information for companies from around the world.
The term "red-light district" may have originated in Dodge City, where railroad workers would hang their lanterns outside the brothels.
