96 Fun Facts About Kansas

Which comic-book hero grew up on a family farm in Kansas?

Superman was raised near fictional Smallville, Kansas, and fans in a real Kansas town later campaigned to rename it Smallville.

Which of these state nicknames belongs to Kansas?

The Sunflower State takes its name from the wild native sunflower, a plant American Indians used for food thousands of years ago.

The violent 1850s struggle over whether the territory would allow slavery is remembered by what name?

Bleeding Kansas saw at least 56 documented political killings, a violent prelude to the Civil War that soon followed.

The 1854 Kansas–Nebraska Act repealed which earlier deal that had banned slavery north of a set latitude?

The Missouri Compromise had barred slavery north of 36°30′; repealing it let settlers vote on slavery, and both North and South sent settlers to Kansas.

Which Kansas town was burned in the August 1863 raid led by Confederate guerrilla William Quantrill?

Lawrence, founded in 1854 by New England settlers, was targeted as an antislavery stronghold and a base for Jayhawker raids into Missouri.

The 1954 Supreme Court case striking down school segregation was against which Kansas city's school board?

Topeka's board kept black and white children in separate elementary schools, which an 1879 Kansas law allowed in cities of 15,000 or more.

Which Kansas town did President Dwight D. Eisenhower consider his hometown?

Abilene was his home from 1892, and after he died in Washington in 1969 his body was returned there for burial at his presidential library.

Aviator Amelia Earhart was born in 1897 in which Kansas river town?

She was born in her grandfather's house; he was a former judge and president of the local savings bank.

Kansas's highest natural point lies a short walk from which state's border?

Colorado's line is close by; Kansas climbs so gradually from east to west that its 4,039-foot high point looks like the surrounding plains.

The geographic center of the 48 contiguous states lies near which small Kansas town?

Lebanon's claim comes from a 1918 survey that balanced a cardboard cutout of the country on a point; the true spot lies on a nearby farm.

The Flint Hills of eastern Kansas are famous for holding the densest remaining stretch of what ecosystem?

Tallgrass prairie survives there because the rocky soil was too shallow to plow, so settlers ran cattle instead of planting crops.

Which Kansas cowtown employed lawmen Wyatt Earp and Bat Masterson?

Dodge City first boomed on buffalo hides after the Santa Fe railroad arrived in 1872, then took over the Texas cattle trade in 1876.

Texas longhorns worth a few dollars at home sold for many times more in Kansas, spurring drives along which trail?

The Chisholm Trail led north through Indian Territory to Kansas railheads, where cattle were sold and shipped east by train.

What is the Kansas state motto?

It means "To the stars through difficulties"; a bronze Kansa archer aiming at the North Star, titled Ad Astra, has topped the Capitol dome since 2002.

Which bird is the state bird of Kansas?

The western meadowlark is no true lark but a member of the New World blackbird and oriole family.

Which tree did Kansas designate as its official state tree in 1937?

In hard winters on the Plains, people fed cottonwood to their horses, and Wyoming and Nebraska later made it their state tree too.

The Kansas state song is which American classic, written as a poem by a Smith County homesteader?

Brewster Higley wrote it in the early 1870s as "My Western Home"; the state adopted it in 1947 and KU's band plays it after every home game.

Which reptile is the state reptile of Kansas?

The ornate box turtle is protected under several state laws, yet cars remain one of its leading killers.

Which creature did Kansas make its state amphibian in 1994?

Kansas's state amphibian, the barred tiger salamander, lays its eggs in ponds but spends most of its life hidden in burrows underground.

Which immigrant group is credited with bringing hard winter wheat to Kansas in the 19th century?

Miller Bernhard Warkentin imported seed from Ukraine to feed demand, and USDA crop explorer Mark Carleton went to Russia hunting for more varieties.

Which Kansas town's Plaza theater claims to be the oldest operating movie theater in America?

Ottawa's claim surfaced in 2013, when local researchers found evidence that its building had been showing movies for over a century.

Cessna, Beechcraft and Hawker were merged under which Wichita-based company in 2014?

Boeing, by contrast, ended decades of Kansas manufacturing between 2012 and 2013.

Which restaurant chain was founded in Wichita in 1958 by two brothers with a $600 loan from their mother?

Dan and Frank Carney chose the name because their sign only had room for eight letters.

Which chain, credited as the world's first fast-food burger chain, was founded in Wichita in 1921?

White Castle set chain-wide standards for cooking and staff cleanliness, so customers could count on the same burgers and service at every location.

Who founded the University of Kansas basketball program in 1898?

James Naismith, who invented basketball, is ironically the only Kansas coach with a losing record, 55–60.

Which university's teams are the Wildcats, wearing Royal Purple?

Kansas State opened in 1863 after Manhattan donated the Blue Mont College building and grounds to host the state's land-grant college.

Which coach arrived at Kansas State in 1989 and turned its football program into a No. 1-ranked team?

He retired in 2005, came back in 2009 and won the Big 12 again in 2012; the home field is now named for his family.

Which MLS club plays its home games on the Kansas side of Kansas City?

Sporting Kansas City began at Arrowhead Stadium in Missouri, crossed the state line in 2008 and opened its own Kansas stadium in 2011.

What is the nickname of Wichita State's athletic teams?

Tradition has it the Shockers began in 1904 as the Wheatshockers, since players earned money shocking, or harvesting, wheat.

In L. Frank Baum's 1900 novel, what carries Dorothy's Kansas farmhouse to the Land of Oz?

A cyclone drops the house on the Wicked Witch of the East, whose shoes are silver in the book; the 1939 film reportedly made them ruby to show off Technicolor.

Which small Kansas town has a museum devoted to The Wizard of Oz?

Wamego's Oz Museum was followed by an Oz Cluster of Oz-themed businesses in town.

Which Kansas city races Olney, England, in the Shrove Tuesday International Pancake Day race?

Liberal races Olney, England, whose pancake race is said to date to 1445, when a housewife ran to church still holding her frying pan.

Which Kansas town is nicknamed "Little Sweden", complete with Dala horses downtown?

Lindsborg's Swedish Pavilion was built for the 1904 St. Louis World's Fair, then bought by the US minister to Sweden and given to the town's Bethany College.

Which Kansas city grew up beside an 1827 Army fort and calls itself the First City of Kansas?

Leavenworth's namesake fort was set up in 1827 by Colonel Henry Leavenworth to protect travelers on the Santa Fe Trail.

As of 2025, which famous Army division is based at Fort Riley, near Junction City?

The 1st Infantry Division, the Big Red One, stormed the Normandy beaches on D-Day in World War II.

In 1881 Kansas became the first U.S. state to do what?

Kansas chose to ban alcohol in its constitution, and Carrie Nation later campaigned to enforce that ban before turning to smashing saloons.

Hatchet-wielding temperance crusader Carrie Nation smashed her first saloon in 1900 in which Kansas town?

Nation's first saloon attack, in Kiowa, used rocks rather than the hatchet she later made famous.

The Dalton Gang was largely wiped out in 1892 trying to rob two banks at once in which Kansas town?

Coffeyville's citizens shot four of the five gang members dead; the survivor, Emmett Dalton, was later pardoned.

Truman Capote's In Cold Blood recounts the 1959 Clutter family murders in which western Kansas town?

Holcomb's murders drew Truman Capote and his childhood friend Harper Lee, who helped him interview residents and investigators.

What were the African Americans who migrated from the South to Kansas around 1879 called?

Exodusters left the South to escape racial violence and repression after Reconstruction ended.

Which Kansas-born citizen of the Kaw Nation was the first Native American US vice president?

Charles Curtis served under Herbert Hoover and, as a senator, sponsored an Equal Rights Amendment decades before Congress passed the ERA in 1972.

In which Kansas town was Bob Dole born and raised?

Russell native Bob Dole was badly wounded in World War II, and Daniel Inouye, a fellow patient at his hospital, later served beside him in the Senate.

Which Kansas governor was the 1936 Republican nominee who won only Maine and Vermont?

Alf Landon did not even carry Kansas, and his daughter Nancy Kassebaum later became the first woman to represent Kansas in the Senate.

The Cosmosphere museum, which restored Apollo 13's Odyssey capsule, is in which Kansas city?

Hutchinson's Cosmosphere also built about 80 percent of the props for the movie Apollo 13.

Tourists at Kansas's Strataca museum ride 650 feet down into a working mine of what?

Salt has been mined there since the 1920s, and a storage company keeps movie negatives and records in vaults inside the same mine.

Big Brutus, the largest electric shovel still in existence, stands as a museum in which corner of Kansas?

It dug coal near West Mineral from 1963 to 1974 and was simply too big to move when the mine closed, so it stayed put.

Cawker City, Kansas, holds a festival every August to add more of what to a giant ball?

Twine is the pride of Cawker City, where Frank Stoeber wound 1.6 million feet of it into a ball before he died in 1974. Neighbours have kept it growing ever since at a yearly Twine-a-thon.

Which gas was first found in natural gas after a 1903 well at Dexter, Kansas, would not burn?

Helium was identified in the Dexter gas by University of Kansas chemists Hamilton Cady and David McFarland. Gas fields under Kansas and nearby states went on to supply most of America's helium.

Which children's author based a Little House novel on her family's 1869 cabin near Independence, Kansas?

Laura Ingalls Wilder was a small child when her father built the one-room log cabin on Osage land. Her sister Carrie was born there shortly before the family moved on.

Which famous highway crosses just 13 miles of Kansas, through Galena, Riverton and Baxter Springs?

Route 66 clips one corner of Kansas for just 13.2 miles. A rusty old truck parked in Galena inspired the character Mater in Pixar's Cars.

Which world did Clyde Tombaugh, a telescope-building farm boy from Burdett, Kansas, discover in 1930?

Pluto was found by Tombaugh at Lowell Observatory in Arizona, which had offered him a job after he mailed in his drawings of Jupiter and Mars. He had no college degree at the time.

Which Wichita-born actress became the first African American to win an Oscar, for a 1939 film?

Hattie McDaniel won Best Supporting Actress for playing Mammy opposite Vivien Leigh and Clark Gable. She was the youngest of 13 children born to formerly enslaved parents.

Settlers in treeless north-central Kansas cut miles of fence posts from which kind of rock?

Limestone posts weighing 250 to 450 pounds each line country roads across the Smoky Hills. Barbed wire made them practical, because a fence needed only one post every 30 feet or so.

Susanna Salter of Argonia, Kansas, became in 1887 the first American woman elected to which office?

Mayor was a job Salter never sought: men who opposed women in politics put her name on the ballot as a stunt, expecting a humiliating loss. Local temperance women voted for her in a bloc instead.

Which NBA giant, the only man to score 100 points in a game, played for the University of Kansas?

Wilt Chamberlain took Kansas to the 1957 national title game, lost in triple overtime to North Carolina. His dominance near the basket later pushed rule-makers to widen the lane.

Which animal, shown on the 2005 Kansas state quarter, has been the official state animal since 1955?

The American buffalo on some 2005 Kansas quarters has an extra hump, the result of a cracked die that coin collectors hunt for. Vast herds once grazed the state.

Dorothy's Kansas dog Toto was played in the 1939 film The Wizard of Oz by which breed?

A Cairn terrier named Terry played Toto, and she was female. She was hurt during filming when one of the actors playing a Winkie guard stepped on her paw.

Which silent-film comedian was born in 1895 to a vaudeville family in tiny Piqua, Kansas?

Buster Keaton arrived in Piqua only because his mother happened to be visiting the town. He became a child star in the family's knockabout act, which kept running into laws against child performers.

Which GPS and smartwatch maker, founded in Lenexa in 1989, has its headquarters in Olathe, Kansas?

Garmin blends the first names of its founders, Gary Burrell and Min Kao. The pair started out as ProNav, selling a GPS unit for boaters.

Which state shares the whole southern border of Kansas, a straight line along the 37th parallel?

Oklahoma and Kansas meet along the 37th parallel, the same line that divides Utah from Arizona farther west. Congress drew it in 1854, when the land below it was Indian Territory.

Which US president's mother, Ann Dunham, was born in Wichita, Kansas?

Barack Obama's maternal grandparents, Stanley and Madelyn Dunham, grew up in the Kansas towns of El Dorado and Augusta. They married in 1940 on the night of Madelyn's senior prom.

Emporia, Kansas, held the first observance in 1953 of which US holiday, formerly called Armistice Day?

Veterans Day was the idea of Emporia shoe repairman Alvin King, who urged his congressman, Edward Rees, to rename the holiday. Congress made the change nationwide a year later.

Which Kansas college town on the Big Blue River calls itself the Little Apple?

Manhattan borrowed the nickname from New York City's Big Apple. Its New England founders had first named the 1855 settlement Boston.

University of Kansas teams take which nickname, first used for free-state militias in the 1850s?

Jayhawks comes from the Jayhawkers, militias who fought to keep slavery out of the territory. The cartoon bird arrived only in 1912, and the student who drew it gave it shoes.

Which frozen drink did Kansas Dairy Queen owner Omar Knedlik invent in 1958 after his soda machine broke?

The Icee was born when Knedlik chilled soda bottles in the freezer and customers loved the slushy result. 7-Eleven bought his machines in 1965 and sold the drink as the Slurpee.

Which 1976 single by the band Kansas, written by Kerry Livgren, was the group's first top-40 hit?

Carry On Wayward Son reached No. 11 in early 1977. Livgren wrote it after rehearsals had ended and played it to his bandmates only once they had reached the recording studio.

Which Jazz Age poet spent most of his childhood in Kansas, raised mainly by his grandmother?

Langston Hughes lived with his grandmother, Mary Patterson Langston, while his mother travelled in search of work. He wrote his signature poem, The Negro Speaks of Rivers, as a teenager while crossing the Mississippi.

Which Wichita-born running back spent ten seasons with the Detroit Lions, then retired abruptly in 1999?

Barry Sanders walked away at 31, only 1,457 yards short of the NFL's career rushing record. He was the seventh of eleven children.

Which cinema chain, founded in Kansas City in 1920, has its headquarters in Leawood, Kansas?

AMC Theatres built a twin cinema in 1963 because its two plots in a shopping centre could not be joined, an early step toward the multiplex. It patented the cup-holder armrest in 1981.

Council Grove, Kansas, is named for an 1825 Osage treaty granting wagon trains the use of which road west?

The Santa Fe Trail crossed the whole length of Kansas, carrying trade wagons until the railroad took over in 1880. Council Grove's main street lies right on top of it.

In 1976 Kansas schoolchildren gathered more than 2,000 signatures to make which creature the state insect?

The honeybee won after students across Kansas signed the petition. The law that names it praises the bee as a hard worker that fights only in defence of something it cherishes.

In the 1939 film The Wizard of Oz, the Kansas scenes were shot in black and white, then tinted which tone?

Sepia gives the Kansas farm its faded, washed-out look, so the jump to three-strip Technicolor in Oz lands harder. Aunt Em's appearance in the witch's crystal ball is tinted the same way.

Which camping brand, famous for its lanterns, grew out of a gasoline lamp business in early-1900s Wichita?

Coleman lamps lit a 1905 college football game, the first played at night west of the Mississippi. The US government later handed out the lanterns to farmers during World War I.

Which jazz saxophonist nicknamed Bird was born in Kansas City, Kansas, in 1920?

Charlie Parker grew up just over the state line and left for New York in 1939. There his fast, intricate solos became the foundation of a new style of jazz called bebop.

Which 40-foot sea reptile, known from fossils found in Kansas, became the state marine fossil in 2014?

Tylosaurus was a giant mosasaur that ruled the shallow sea covering Kansas late in the age of dinosaurs. On the same day the state named Pteranodon its official flying fossil.

Which Life magazine photographer from Fort Scott, Kansas, went on to direct the 1971 film Shaft?

Gordon Parks taught himself photography with a $12.50 camera from a Seattle pawnshop. His film The Learning Tree was the first by a Black director to be financed by a major Hollywood studio.

Which car maker, raised in Ellis, Kansas, started out as a machinist in the town's railroad shops?

Walter Chrysler's boyhood house in Ellis is a museum. He quit railroading to run production at Buick, then founded the company bearing his name in Detroit in 1925.

The Kaw, the tribe that gave Kansas its name, have long been called the People of the what?

South Wind is the image most tied to the Kaw, who have also been called the People of Water. In 1873 they left Kansas by wagon for a new reservation in Indian Territory.

John R. Brinkley got rich in 1920s Milford, Kansas, implanting men with glands from which animal?

Goats made Brinkley so famous that, even after Kansas stripped his medical licence, he ran for governor three times and twice came close to winning.

Which novelist went to Kansas with childhood friend Truman Capote to help research In Cold Blood?

Harper Lee helped Capote win the confidence of wary locals, and together they filled thousands of pages with notes. She later won the Pulitzer Prize for To Kill a Mockingbird.

Which World War II bomber, the type that dropped the atomic bombs, rolled out of Boeing's Wichita plant?

The B-29 Superfortress turned Wichita into a boomtown as workers poured in to build it. A restored example named Doc took off from the city in 2016, its first flight in 60 years.

Which business-jet maker, whose first plane drew on a Swiss fighter design, set up in Wichita in 1962?

Learjet moved its tooling from Switzerland to Kansas because, the founder's son said, everything took too long to get done there. The first Learjet 23 flew in October 1963.

Which abolitionist dominates the Kansas Capitol mural Tragic Prelude, holding a Bible and a rifle?

John Brown stands before a tornado and a wildfire in John Steuart Curry's painting. The rock band Kansas put the image on the cover of its 1974 debut album.

Which singer born in Kansas City, Kansas, starred in the 2016 films Moonlight and Hidden Figures?

Janelle Monáe grew up in Quindaro, a working-class neighbourhood of Kansas City, Kansas. Her 2018 album Dirty Computer was named album of the year by several publications.

Most of Kansas keeps Central Time, but a strip of counties on its far edge set their clocks to which zone?

Mountain Time is kept in Sherman, Wallace, Greeley and Hamilton counties, where clocks run an hour behind the rest of Kansas. Goodland, the Sherman County seat, is one of the towns on that clock.

Pittsburg State in Kansas is the only US university with which animal as its mascot?

The gorilla dates from 1920, when students fed up with weak school spirit formed a pep club called the Gorillas, then slang for roughnecks. The mascot goes by the name Gus.

Which 1983 TV film about nuclear war, seen by over 100 million people, centres on a Kansas college town?

The Day After was filmed on location, and the town's newspaper ran an advert calling for residents to sign up as extras. Kansas City is wiped out in the story.

Which Wichita-born running back, nicknamed the Kansas Comet, starred for the Chicago Bears in the 1960s?

Gale Sayers entered the Pro Football Hall of Fame at 34, younger than anyone before him. His friendship with dying teammate Brian Piccolo became the TV movie Brian's Song.

Jack Kilby, raised in Great Bend, Kansas, won a Nobel Prize in Physics for inventing which device?

The integrated circuit, better known as the microchip, was Kilby's 1958 breakthrough at Texas Instruments. He went on to co-invent the handheld calculator.

Monument Rocks, the 70-foot spires named the first National Natural Landmark in Kansas, are made of what?

Chalk laid down about 80 million years ago on the floor of an inland sea forms the spires, which are rich in fossils. They are also known as the Chalk Pyramids.

Greensburg, Kansas, bills which attraction, sunk 109 feet deep in the 1880s, as the world's largest?

The hand-dug well was begun in 1887 to supply water to steam railroads. Its visitor centre was destroyed by the tornado that flattened Greensburg in 2007 and has since been rebuilt.

Which Wichita-born basketball star became in 1985 the first woman to play for the Harlem Globetrotters?

Lynette Woodard joined the Harlem Globetrotters a year after she won Olympic gold with the United States in 1984. At the University of Kansas she had scored 3,649 points.

Which 44-foot steel sculpture by Blackbear Bosin stands where two rivers meet in Wichita, Kansas?

Keeper of the Plains has stood beside the Mid-America All-Indian Center since 1974. Fire pits around its base, called the Rings of Fire, are lit manually to light up the figure at night.

Which wild fruit did pupils from Sabetha, Valley Falls and Healy help make the Kansas state fruit in 2022?

The sandhill plum is known in other parts of North America as the Chickasaw plum, Cherokee plum or sand plum. Lawmakers made it an official Kansas symbol with the students' backing.

Cheyenne Bottoms in Kansas, a rest stop for millions of migrating birds, is which kind of landscape?

The wetland covers about 41,000 acres, which makes it the largest in the interior United States. It lies on the Central Flyway, the bird migration corridor down the middle of the continent.

Which runner from Wichita East High School became in 1964 the first schoolboy to break the 4-minute mile?

Jim Ryun ran 3:59.0 as a junior and yet finished only eighth in a fast field. He later won Olympic silver and spent a decade in Congress representing Kansas.