Kansas

Bleeding Kansas

Kansas was born in conflict. In 1854 the Kansas-Nebraska Act opened the territory to settlement and let its settlers decide by vote whether to allow slavery. Proslavery settlers, many from neighboring Missouri, and antislavery settlers from the North poured in to win the vote, and the territory descended into years of raids, fraud and killings known as “Bleeding Kansas.” Rival governments wrote rival constitutions, and the territory even had rival capitals: proslavery Lecompton and free-state Lawrence and Topeka.

The free-state side won. Kansans ratified an antislavery constitution in 1859, and on January 29, 1861, President James Buchanan signed the bill admitting Kansas as a free state, the 34th. Kansans celebrate January 29 as Kansas Day. The seal adopted that spring carries 34 stars, and the motto chosen with it, “Ad astra per aspera,” “To the stars through difficulties,” fit the state’s hard road to statehood.

The name

Kansas is named for the Kaw, or Kansa, people, the dominant tribe in the region by the mid-1700s. French traders and other Europeans wrote the name in many forms, among them Kanza and Kansa. The Kansas Historical Society traces it to a Siouan word for the south wind, and the Kaw are often called the People of the Southwind.

Capitals of a divided territory

The territory’s first legislature met for just five days in July 1855 at Pawnee, near Fort Riley, in a building whose floors were not yet finished. It then moved over the governor’s veto to Shawnee Mission and later to Lecompton, the proslavery capital. Topeka, the free-state stronghold, became the state capital in 1861, and voters confirmed it that November, choosing Topeka over Lawrence. The Capitol took 37 years to build and stands about 17 feet taller than the US Capitol. The capital page tells the story.

The Sunflower State

Kansas has long been called the Sunflower State, after the wild sunflower that blooms along its roadsides. The 1903 law that made the sunflower the state flower is unusual: it opens with a preamble praising the flower as easy to draw, carve or embroider and calling it a symbol of frontier days. No law formally adopts the nickname. Kansas is also called the Wheat State, for its huge wheat harvests, which grew after Mennonite immigrants brought hardy Turkey Red winter wheat in the 1870s.

Fossils, schoolchildren and a cage elevator

Kansas has 35 official symbols, and many were proposed by students. More than 121,000 schoolchildren voted for the western meadowlark, the state bird since 1937. Students also pushed for the honeybee, the ornate box turtle, the barred tiger salamander and the sandhill plum. The American buffalo is the state animal.

Kansas has three state fossils. In the age of dinosaurs much of Kansas lay under an inland sea, so its fossils include Tylosaurus, a giant sea reptile more than 40 feet long, and Pteranodon, a flying reptile with a wingspan over 24 feet. In 2023 the legislature added Silvisaurus, an armored dinosaur and the only one known to have lived on land in what is now Kansas. Kansas even has an official cage elevator, the one installed in the Capitol in 1923, which the law says must be kept running. See every symbol on the Kansas symbols page.

The flag shows the state seal and a sunflower on blue. For two years before it was adopted, Kansas was represented by a hanging sunflower banner instead.

Land and people

Kansas covers 82,278 square miles, 15th among the states, rising gently from the Missouri River in the east to the High Plains near Colorado. It had about 2.98 million residents in 2025, 34th in the country. It borders Nebraska, Missouri, Oklahoma and Colorado, and the geographic center of the 48 contiguous states lies within it, near Lebanon. Wichita, with about 401,000 people, is the largest city, followed by Overland Park, Kansas City, Olathe and Topeka.