Kansas Trivia & Tidbits - Page 6

Looking for Kansas trivia? Try our list Kansas little know facts, tidbits and trivia.

Jonathan Holden is the state’s first poet laureate and is poet-in-residence at Kansas State University in Manhattan (pop. 44,831). He has published more than 190 poems and won several awards, including two National Endowment for the Arts fellowships.

first appeared: 10/23/2005

Wyldewood Cellars Winery, founded in 1994 by the brother and sister team of John and Merry Brewer in Mulvane (pop. 5,155), is one of the nation’s largest producers of elderberry wine and produces elderberry jellies and syrup along with other varieties of wine.

first appeared: 10/9/2005

A full-scale replica of the Liberty Bell woven from Turkey red wheat straw is displayed at the Mennonite Heritage Museum in Goessel (pop. 565). Mennonite weavers spent more than 2,000 hours making the bell to commemorate the nation’s 1976 bicentennial.

first appeared: 9/25/2005

A group of retirees in Leavenworth (pop. 35,420) spent 17 years restoring a 1913 carousel for the C.W. Parker Carousel Museum, which opened last April. Parker, a Leavenworth amusement manufacturer, was famous nationwide for his carousels.

first appeared: 9/18/2005

North America’s native tallgrass prairie once covered 142 million acres; today, less than 4 percent of the prairie remains, two-thirds of it in the Kansas Flint Hills.

first appeared: 9/11/2005

Walter P. Chrysler, born in Ellis (pop. 1,873) in 1875, was named Time magazine’s Man of the Year in 1928—the second year the designation was handed out. In its cover story, the magazine hailed Chrysler’s introduction of the Plymouth and DeSoto models, purchase of Dodge Brothers automobile company, and plans to build a 68-story skyscraper in New York City.

first appeared: 9/11/2005

Garden City (pop. 28,451) first was known as Fulton, after brothers William and James Fulton, who founded the Finney County town in 1878. According to local legend, the town got its blooming name from a tramp who admired the garden of William’s wife at the hotel they owned.

first appeared: 8/28/2005

Opened in 1955 as the first state park in Kansas, Kanopolis State Park at Marquette (pop. 542) boasts hiking trails, sandstone bluffs, prairie dogs, a 3,406-acre lake and the Faris Caves, dug by a miner in the 1880s as living quarters and used by later owners as a school and springhouse.

first appeared: 8/14/2005

Salina (pop. 45,679) Municipal Airport is known as "America’s fuel stop" because more than 7,000 jets stop there annually on their way across the continent. Two "fixed-base operators," or FBOs, sell 4.4 million gallons of fuel each year to civilian and military aircraft.

first appeared: 7/31/2005

Charles Hyer of Olathe is credited with making the first cowboy boots in 1875 for a cowboy who asked for boots with a pointed toe and high heel to slide into and hold a stirrup. By 1919, the Hyer Boot Co. sold 15,000 pairs of cowboy boots a year.

first appeared: 7/17/2005

Now a historic museum, the 1885 Historic Pottawattomie County Jail, also known as the Squirrel Cage Jail, in Council Bluff (pop. 58,268) is one of three remaining "Lazy Susan" jails in the nation and was designed to hold 63 prisoners in wedge-shaped cells. By using a hand crank, the jailer could rotate the three-story cylindrical cage.

first appeared: 6/19/2005

The state’s longest-serving sheriff, Rush County Sheriff Jack Mendenhall, retired in January after 42 years in office.

first appeared: 6/5/2005

Since 1957, Humboldt (pop. 1,999) has held a Biblesta parade each October with floats that depict biblical scenes in chronological order competing for top honors. A 40-foot-long whale and Jonah is a favorite float, which appears each year.

first appeared: 5/22/2005

In 1873, Chanute (pop. 9,411) was named for Octave Chanute, a prominent engineer who compiled a history of flight research and advised the Wright brothers on airplane construction.

first appeared: 5/8/2005

Pheasant hunters from around the nation flock to Norton (pop. 3,012), the "Pheasant Capital of Kansas." The area also is known for Prairie Dog State Park, home to a thriving population of prairie dogs.

first appeared: 4/24/2005

In 1955, more than 200 drag racers revved up at an abandoned airstrip in Great Bend (pop. 15,345) for the National Hot Rod Association’s first national event.

first appeared: 4/10/2005

Five Kansas towns—Arkansas City (pop. 11,963), Caldwell (pop. 1,284), Cameron, Hunnewell (pop. 83) and Kiowa (pop. 1,055)—served as registration sites for the land rush into the Cherokee Strip (in present-day Oklahoma). On Sept. 16, 1893, thousands of land-hungry settlers raced from the towns to stake their claims.

first appeared: 3/27/2005

The Museum of Independent Telephony in Abilene (pop. 6,543) rings with history and the story of C.L. Brown’s 1898 local telephone company, now Sprint.

first appeared: 3/13/2005

The 1950s All-Electric House at the Johnson County Museum of History in Shawnee (pop. 47,996) was built as a model home by Kansas City Power and Light Co. to showcase futuristic features.

first appeared: 2/27/2005

Dennis Hopper, who starred in and directed the 1969 classic road film Easy Rider, took art classes as a young man from the noted American regionalist painter Thomas Hart Benton at the Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art in Kansas City, Mo. Hopper was born in 1936 in Dodge City (pop. 25,176).

first appeared: 2/13/2005

jump to page: 1 , 2 , 3 , 4 , 5 , 6 , 7 , 8 , 9 , 10 , 11 , 12 , 13 , 14 , 15 , 16 , 17

newspaper partner login create account

Recent

Popular

Recipes

Below are the most recent American Profile articles:

Below are the most recent, highest rated American Profile articles:

Below are the most recent, highest rated American Profile recipes:

Relish

Spry

Below are the most recent articles from our Relish sister site. Click on the "Spry" tab above to see the most recent articles from our other sister site.

Below are the most recent articles from our Spry sister site. Click on the "Relish" tab above to see the most recent articles from our other sister site.