Kansas

Also see Kansas Humor, Specific Destinations, Travel and Location Humor.

Page Toppers

Everything's Up-to-Date in Kansas City
(from Oklahoma)
Flint Hills of Kansas
(song by Bell and Shore)
Home on the Range
Kansas Can and Kansas Will
Kansas City Lights
(song by Steve Wariner)
Kansas City Star
(song by Roger Miller)
Kansas Grown
My Kansas "Sonflower" (with photo of little boy)
The Land of 'Ahhhs'
Way Out West in Kansas
(song by Nimrod Workman)
Wichita Lineman
(song by Glen Campbell)

Kansas Symbols

Nicknames: The Sunflower State; The Wheat State; The Jayhawk State; Midway, USA; Garden of the West; Battleground of Freedom; The Central State; The Cyclone State; The Grasshopper state
Motto: To the stars through difficulties
Song: Home on the Range
Marches: The Kansas March and Here's Kansas
Animal: American Buffalo
Bird: Western Meadowlark
Fish: Channel Catfish
Amphibian: Barred Tiger Salamander
Reptile: Ornate Box Turtle
Insect: Honeybee
Tree: Eastern Cottonwood
Flower: Native Sunflower

Facts About Kansas

Capital: Topeka
Residents: Kansans, Jayhawkers
State Name Origin: named after the Kansa Indians (Kansa means "people of the south wind")
Admitted to Statehood: 29 Jan 1861
Order of Admission: 34th state
Length: 400 miles
Width: 210 miles
Area: 82,277 square miles
Size Rank: 15
Number of Counties: 105
Streams and Rivers: 134,338 miles
Geographic Center of KS: 15 miles NE of Great Bend in Barton Co.
The geographical center of the 48 contiguous states is on a hog farm near Lebanon in Smith Co.
The geodetic center of the 48 contiguous states is 42 miles S of Lebanon at Meade's Ranch in Smith Co. It is the beginning point of reference for land surveying in North America. When a surveyor checks a property line, he or she is checking the position of property in relation to Meade's Ranch in northwest Kansas. (A geodetic survey makes corrections to account for the curvature of the Earth)
Mean Elevation: 2,000 feet
Highest Point: Mt. Sunflower, 4,039 feet
Lowest Point: Verdigris River, 680 feet
Agricultural Products: wheat, cattle, corn, hay, food products
Commercial Products: aircraft and other transportation equipment, industrial machinery, oil, natural gas
Average Annual Rainfall: varies from less than 20 inches in western KS to over 40 inches in southeast KS
Average Winter High Temperature: 25 degrees
Record Low Temperature: -40 degrees (13 Feb 1905 Lebanon)
Average Summer High Temperature: 80 degrees
Record High Temperature: 121 degrees (24 Jul 1936 Alton)
Official Language: English
More information about Kansas

Quotes

Auntie Em, Hate you, hate Kansas, taking the dog. Dorothy.
Holcomb stands on the high wheat plains of western Kansas, a lonesome area that other Kansans call "out there." (Truman Capote)
I don't know if I want to go to New York. They'll have to pay me a lot more money because I like it here in Kansas City. (Roger Maris)
It isn't necessary to have relatives in Kansas City in order to be unhappy. (Groucho Marx)
The proudest thing I can claim is that I am from Abilene. (Dwight D. Eisenhower)
Toto, I have a feeling we're not in Kansas anymore! (from The Wizard of OZ)

Page Ideas

Kansas Grown
Cut a brown stem, 2 green leaves, large brown circle and many small yellow petals. Arrange them on the page to look like a sunflower. Cut two smaller photos in the shape of the leaves but slightly smaller (or cut the photos first, adhere to green paper and cut around the photo). Cut another photo in a circle and mat on the brown circle. Adhere the petals around the edge. This looks great with photos of kids with sunflowers.

Kansas From A - Z

This is a great ABC list about Kansas

Home on the Range

(words by Brewster Higley, music by Daniel Kelley)

Oh, give me a home where the buffalo roam
Where the deer and the antelope play
Where seldom is heard a discouraging word
And the skies are not cloudy all day

Chorus:
Home, home on the range
Where the deer and the antelope play
Where seldom is heard a discouraging word
And the skies are not cloudy all day

How often at night when the heavens are bright
With the light from the glittering stars
Have I stood there amazed and asked as I gazed
If their glory exceeds that of ours
(Repeat Chorus)

Where the air is so pure, the zephyrs so free
The breezes so balmy and light
That I would not exchange my home on the range
For all of the cities so bright
(Repeat Chorus)

Oh, I love those wild flow'rs in this dear land of ours
The curlew, I love to hear scream
And I love the white rocks and the antelope flocks
That graze on the mountaintops green
(Repeat Chorus)

Kansas Pioneers

(Velma West)

"When we came to Kansas," grandfather said,
"I built us a cabin and chinked it tight,
There was oak and hickory for our fires,
And a good, cold spring near the cabin site."

"I shot plenty of deer," he reminisced,
"And prairie chickens were thick as hops;
Fish in the crick and squirrels in the woods,
So we didn't depend alone on crops."
She sighed, "We were miles and miles from shops."

"I broke the sod for some corn and wheat
But grasshoppers plagued and dry years came;
Some folks packed up and they went back East,"
Said he, "but we stayed and proved out claim."
Said she, "All alone when my first child came."

Why I Love Kansas

(Ann Lindholm)

When it's Christmas time in Kansas,
And the gentle breezes blow,
About seventy miles an hour
And it's fifty-two below.

You can tell you're in Kansas,
'Cause the snow's up to your butt,
And you take a breath of Christmas air
And your nose holes both freeze shut.

The weather here is wonderful,
So I guess I'll hang around;
I could NEVER leave Kansas now,
My feet are frozen to the ground.

from Kansas City

(Trini Lopez)

I'm going to Kansas City,
Kansas City here I come.
They got some crazy little women there
And I'm gonna get me one.

I'm gonna be standing on the corner,
Twelfth Street and Vine;
With my Kansas City baby and my bottle
Of Kansas City wine.

Well, I might take a train,
might take a plane,
But if I have to walk,
I'm gonna fly there just the same.
Yeaaaah, Kansas City here I come.
They got some crazy little women there
And I'm gonna get me one.

Sunrise in Kansas

(Rea Williams)

There's enthralling beauty in a waking world
As again the sun's reborn
Over a dew-drenched sparkling land
Of a lovely Kansas morn.

Birds with cheerful song awing
Dispel the gloom of night
Lifting my spirit to realms of peace
In ethereal glowing light.

No other time can quite compare
With the morning hush that stills
Tumultuous sounds of another night
Along those Kansas hills.

Sunset in Kansas

(Rea Williams)

At eventide of a beautiful day
For a moment before I rest,
I pause to gaze in breathless awe
At the sunset in the west.

Majestic cedars with shimmering boughs
Like lofty cathedral spires
Proclaim the beauty of the Master's brush
While another day expires.

I'm not imbued with proper words
To describe His glowing canvas
As He paints another celestial scene
In the western skies of Kansas.

The Kansas Emigrants

(John Greenleaf Whittier)

WE cross the prairie as of old
The pilgrims crossed the sea,
To make the West, as they the East,
The homestead of the free!

We go to rear a wall of men
On Freedom's southern line,
And plant beside the cotton-tree
The rugged Northern pine!

We're flowing from our native hills
As our free rivers flow;
The blessing of our Mother-land
Is on us as we go.

We go to plant her common schools
On distant prairie swells,
And give the Sabbaths of the wild
The music of her bells.

Upbearing, like the Ark of old,
The Bible in our van,
We go to test the truth of God
Against the fraud of man.

No pause, nor rest, save where the streams
That feed the Kansas run,
Save where our Pilgrim gonfalon
Shall flout the setting sun!

We'll tread the prairie as of old
Our fathers sailed the sea,
And make the West, as they the East,
The homestead of the free!

Kansas

(Vachel Lindsay)

Oh, I have walked in Kansas
Through many a harvest field,
And piled the sheaves of glory there
And down the wild rows reeled:

Each sheaf a little yellow sun,
A heap of hot-rayed gold;
Each binder like Creation's hand
To mold suns, as of old.

Straight overhead the orb of noon
Beat down with brimstone breath:
The desert wind from south and west
Was blistering flame and death.

Yet it was gay in Kansas,
A-fighting that strong sun;
And I and many a fellow-tramp
Defied that wind and won.

And we felt free in Kansas
From any sort of fear,
For thirty thousand tramps like us
There harvest every year.

She stretches arms for them to come,
She roars for helpers then,
And so it is in Kansas
That tramps, one month, are men.

We sang in burning Kansas
The songs of Sabbath-school,
The "Day Star" flashing in the East,
The "Vale of Eden" cool.

We sang in splendid Kansas
"The flag that set us free" -
That march of fifty thousand men
With Sherman to the sea.

We feasted high in Kansas
And had much milk and meat.
The tables groaned to give us power
Wherewith to save the wheat.

Our beds were sweet alfalfa hay
Within the barn-loft wide.
The loft doors opened out upon
The endless wheat-field tide.

I loved to watch the windmills spin
And watch that big moon rise.
I dreamed and dreamed with lids half-shut,
The moonlight in my eyes.

For all men dream in Kansas
By noonday and by night,
By sunrise yellow, red and wild,
And moonrise wild and white.

The wind would drive the glittering clouds,
The cotton woods would croon,
And past the sheaves and through the leaves
Came whispers from the moon.

Items of Interest

There is a grain elevator in Hutchinson that is 1/2 mile long, has 1,000 bins and holds 46 million bushels.
The Rock Island Bridge south of Ashland is the longest railroad bridge of its kind. It is 1,200 feet long and 100 feet above the Cimarron River.
At Kansas State University College of Veterinary Medicine waterbeds are used for horses in surgery.
Kansas won the award for most beautiful license plate for the wheat plate design issued in 1981.
Dodge City is the windiest city in the United States.
Fort Riley was the headquarters of the U.S. Cavalry for 83 years. George Custer formed the 7th Cavalry there in 1866. Ten years later, at the Battle of the Little Big Horn, the 7th was virtually wiped out - the only survivor being a horse named Comanche.
Barton County is the only Kansas county named for a woman; volunteer Civil War nurse Clara Barton.
The Arkansas River may be the only river whose pronunciation changes as it crosses state lines. In Kansas, it is called the Arkansas (ahr-KAN-zuhs). In the bordering states of CO and OK it is called the "Ar-kan-saw" River.
A monument to the first Christian martyr in the U.S. Territory is along Highway 56 near Lyons. Father Juan de Padilla came to North America with Coronado in 1541.
Hutchinson is nicknamed the "Salt City" because it was built above some of the richest salt deposits in the world.
There are 27 Walnut Creeks in the state.
Fire Station No. 4 in Lawrence, originally a stone barn constructed in 1858, was a station on the Underground Railroad.
The Hugoton Gas Field, which covers an area five times as large as the state of RI, is the largest natural gas field in the U.S. It underlies all or parts of 10 southwestern KS counties as well as parts of OK and TX.
Kansas has the largest population of wild grouse (aka prairie chickens) in North America.
At Rock City there are huge sandstone concretions. There are around 200 rocks, some as large as houses, in an area about the size of two football fields. There is no other place in the world where there are so many concretions of such giant size.
The First United Methodist Church in Hutchinson was built in 1874 during the grasshopper plagues. The grasshoppers came during the construction of the church foundation but the pastor continued with the work. As a result, thousands of grasshoppers are mixed into the mortar of the original building's foundation.
The Pizza Hut restaurant chain opened its first store in Wichita.
Sumner County is known as The Wheat Capital of the World.
In 1990 Kansas wheat farmers produced enough wheat to make 33 billion loaves of bread, or enough to provide each person on earth with six loaves.

Notable Natives

Some of these people were born here, others just lived a part of their life in the state.

Kirstie Alley (1951- ) - actress (Wichita)
Roscoe "Fatty" Arbuckle - actor (Smith Center)
Robert D. Ballard (1942- ) - discovered the Titanic shipwreck (Wichita)
Clarence D. Batchelor - political cartoonist (Osage City)
Walter Beech (1891-1950) - aviation pioneer (lived in Wichita)
Gwendolyn Brooks - poet, first African American to win a Pulitzer Prize (Topeka)
John Brown (1800-1859) - infamous abolitionist during the Civil War
George Washington Carver (1864-1943) - humanitarian, scientist, discovered over 300 products made from the peanut (graduated high school in Minneapolis in 1885)
Clyde Cessna (1879-1954) - aviation pioneer (Hawthorne)
Walter Percy Chrysler (1875-1940) - automobile manufacturer, founded Chrysler Corporation in 1925 (Wamego)
Clark M. Clifford - secretary of defense (Fort Scott)
John Steuart Curry - painter (Dunavant)
Charles Curtis (1860-1936) - first native American to serve as U.S. vice president (born near Topeka)
Bob Dole (1923- ) - U.S. senator, presidential candidate in 1996 (Russell)
Amelia Mary Earhart (1897-1937) - first woman granted a pilot's license by the National Aeronautics Associate, first woman to fly solo across the Atlantic, disappeared over the Pacific in 1937 while attempting to fly around the world (Atchison)
Wyatt Earp - legendary lawman
Dwight David Eisenhower (1890-1969) - 34th U.S. President (grew up in Abilene)
Milton S. Eisenhower - educator
Melissa Etheridge (1961- ) - singer, guitarist (Leavenworth)
Reverend Sylvester Graham (1794-1851) - Presbyterian minister who strongly believed in eating whole wheat flour products, the graham cracker was named after him
Maurice Greene - athlete
Carl A. Hatch - politician (Kirwin)
Dennis Hopper - actor (Dodge City)
James Butler "Wild Bill" Hickok (1837-1876) - scout, frontier marshal in the Old West
William Inge - playwright (Independence)
Walter Johnson - baseball pitcher (Humboldt)
Buster Keaton - comedian (Piqua)
Emmett Kelly - clown (Sedan)
Stan Kenton - jazz musician (Wichita)
Omar Knedlik - invented the first frozen carbonated drink machine in 1961 (Coffeyville)
William Lear (1902-1978) - aviation pioneer (lived in Wichita)
James Lehrer - broadcast journalist
Harold Lloyd - actor (Burchard)
Edgar Lee Masters - poet (Garnett)
William B. "Bat" Masterson - legendary lawman
Hattie McDaniel (1895-1952) - first black woman to win an Academy Award for her role in Gone with the Wind (Wichita)
Carl Menninger - psychiatrist (Topeka)
Charlie "Bird" Parker (1920-1955) - one of the greatest jazz musicians in American history (grew up in Kansas City)
Gordon Parks - film maker (Fort Scott)
Cassandra Peterson - aka Elvira Mistress of Dark (Manhattan)
Zasu Pitts - actress (Parsons)
William Purvis - co-inventor of the helicopter in 1909 (Goodland)
Charles Buddy Rogers - actor (Olathe)
Damon Runyan - author, journalist (Manhattan)
Susanna Madora Salter - first woman mayor in the U.S., in Argonia in 1887
Barry Sanders - football player (Wichita)
Eugene W. Smith - photojournalist (Wichita)
William E. Stafford - poet (Hutchinson)
Almon Stowger - invented the dial telephone in 1889 (El Dorado)
John Cameron Swayze - news commentator (Atchison)
Clyde Tombaugh (1906-1997) - astronomer who discovered the planet Pluto (grew up in Burdette)
Vivan Vance actress (Cherryvale)
William Allen White - journalist (Emporia)
Charles E. Whittaker supreme court justice (Troy)
Charles Wilson - co-inventor of the helicopter in 1909 (Goodland)

The Kansas State Flag
The flag, adopted in 1927, has the state Seal centered on a blue background. Above the Seal is the state Crest (a sunflower on a blue and gold bar). Below the Seal is the name "Kansas" in gold block lettering. The Seal has 34 stars representing the order of statehood. Above the stars is the motto "To the Stars Through Difficulties". The scene shows symbols relating to the state's history - a farmer, log cabin, steamboat on the KS River, wagon train, Indian hunting bison and the rolling hills around Ft. Riley.