Wichita, Kansas

Wichita, Kansas
—  City and county seat  —
Nickname(s): Air Capital of the World, ICT
Country	United States
State	Kansas
County	Sedgwick
Township
Founded	1868
Platted
Incorporated	1870
Named for	Wichita people
Government
- Type	Council-Manager
- Mayor	Brandon Whipple (D)
- City Manager	Robert Layton
Area
- City and county seat	166.52 sq mi (431.28 km2)
- Land	161.99 sq mi (419.55 km2)
- Water	4.53 sq mi (11.73 km2)
Elevation	1,303 ft (397 m)
Population (2020)
- City and county seat	397,532
- Estimate (2021)	395,699
- Rank	49th in the United States 1st in Kansas
- Density	2,454.05/sq mi (947.52/km2)
- Metro	647,919 (93rd)
Demonym	Wichitan
Time zone	CST (UTC-6)
- Summer (DST)	CDT (UTC-5)
ZIP Codes	67201–67221, 67223, 67226–67228, 67230, 67232, 67235, 67260, 67275–67278
Area code	316
FIPS code	79000
GNIS ID	473862
Major airport	Wichita Dwight D. Eisenhower National Airport
Public transportation	Wichita Transit
Website	wichita.gov

Wichita is the largest city in the U.S. state of Kansas. Located in south-central Kansas on the Arkansas River, Wichita is the county seat of Sedgwick County and the principal city of the Wichita metropolitan area.

The city was incorporated in 1870, based on the success of businessmen who came to hunt and trade with native populations. Its position on the Chisholm Trail made it a destination for cattle drives heading north to access railroads to eastern markets. In the 20th century, aircraft pioneers such as Clyde Cessna, Walter Beech and Bill Lear began projects that would lead to Wichita's nicknaming as the Air Capital of the World. The aircraft corporations Stearman, Cessna, Mooney and Beechcraft were all founded in Wichita in the late 1920s and early 1930s. Cessna and Hawker Beechcraft remain based in Wichita today, along with Learjet and Spirit AeroSystems, and both Airbus and Boeing maintain a workforce in Wichita. The city was also at one time the headquarters of the former Derby Oil Company, which was purchased by Coastal Corporation in 1988.

An area cultural center, Wichita is home to Intrust Bank Arena as well as numerous nightclubs, restaurants, shopping centers, museums and parks. Several universities are in Wichita, the largest being Wichita State University with an enrollment of 15,000 students. In July 2006, CNN/Money and Money magazine ranked Wichita 9th on its list of the 10 best U.S. big cities in which to live. In 2008, MSN Real Estate ranked Wichita 1st on its list of most affordable cities. Wichita was also named most "Uniquely American" city by Newsmax Magazine.

History

The site at the confluence of the Arkansas and Little Arkansas Rivers has served as a trading center and meeting place for nomadic hunting people for at least 11,000 years. Human habitation in the Wichita area has been dated, in archeological digs, as far back as 3,000 B.C. The area was visited by Francisco Vásquez de Coronado in 1541, while he was in search of the fabulous "cities of gold." While there, he encountered a group of Indians whom he called Quiviras and who have been identified by archeological and historical studies as Wichita Indians. By 1719, these people had moved south to Oklahoma, where they met French traders. The first permanent settlement in Wichita was a collection of grass houses inhabited by the Wichita Indians in 1863. They had moved back to Wichita from Oklahoma during the American Civil War because of their pro-Union sentiments.

The city was officially incorporated in 1870. Its position on the Chisholm Trail made it a destination for cattle drives headed north to access railroads to eastern markets. As a result, it became a railhead destination for cattle drives from Texas and other south-western points, from whence it has derived its nickname "Cowtown." It quickly gained a wild reputation, and had numerous well-known lawmen pass through, employed to help keep the rowdy cowboys in line. Among those was Wyatt Earp.

Following the incorporation of the city in 1870, rapid immigration resulted in a land boom involving speculation into the late 1880s. By 1890 Wichita had become the third largest city in the state (behind Kansas City and Topeka), with a population of nearly 24,000. After the boom the city suffered from 15 years of comparative depression and slow growth. An island in the middle of the Arkansas River, named Ackerman Island was home to an amusement park, and a dance pavillion. The island was connected to the West Bank of the river through a WPA project in the thirties. Wichita reached national fame in 1900 when Woman's Christian Temperance Union (WCTU) member Carrie Nation decided to carry her crusade against alcohol to Wichita. On December 27 of that year she entered the Carey House bar in downtown Wichita and smashed the place with a rock and a pool ball. Although she had visited all the bars in Wichita the night before, demanding that they close their doors, the John Noble painting Cleopatra at the Roman Bath in the Carey House had drawn her particular wrath.

Air Capital

In the 20th century, aircraft pioneers such as Clyde Cessna and Walter Beech began projects that led to Wichita's establishment as the "Air Capital of the World". The aircraft corporations Stearman, Cessna, Mooney and Beech were all founded in Wichita in the late 1920s and early 1930s.

In 1914-1915, oil was discovered nearby and Wichita became a major oil center. The money derived from oil allowed local entrepreneurs to invest in a nascent airplane industry. In 1917, the Cessna Comet became the first aircraft to be manufactured in Wichita. Soon after, the Swallow became Wichita's first airplane made specifically for production and the Swallow Airplane Company built 43 of them between 1920 and 1923. Lloyd Stearman and Walter Beech were both employees of the Swallow Company, but in January 1925 they left Swallow and teamed up with Clyde Cessna to form Travel Air. Stearman left the company in 1926 to start Stearman Aircraft in Venice, California and Cessna quit in January 1927 to start Cessna. In 1927, Stearman would relocate his factory back to Wichita. This varied aircraft industry, along with Wichita becoming a test center for new aviation, established Wichita as the "Air Capital."

Travel Air, with Walter Beech at the helm, grew to over 600 employees and operated from a huge factory complex constructed a few miles outside the city from 1927 to 1929. Due to so many employees working at such a large complex, it was dubbed "Travel Air City" by Wichita residents. The company merged with the huge Curtis Wright Corporation in the Roaring Twenties' heyday of company buyouts and takeovers just two months before the Stock Market crash in 1929. Workers were laid off by the hundreds during 1930 and 1931 and by the fall of 1932, the remaining Travel Air employees were let go, the equipment was sold, and the entire Travel Air plant sat empty.

In March 1932, Beech quit the Curtis Wright Corporation to form Beech Aircraft, along with his wife Olive Ann, and hired Ted Wells as his chief engineer. While he first few "Beechcraft" were built in the vacant Cessna Aircraft plant, which had also closed during the depression, Beech later leased and then bought the Travel Air plant from Curtis Wright and moved his factory to this plant. Beech's first aircraft was the Model 17, later dubbed the "Staggerwing", was first flown on November 5, 1932. Staggerwing production ended in 1946 (to be replaced by the Beechcraft Bonanza) with approximately 750 built. Nearly 100 Staggerwings are still in existence, many in flying condition. However, the aircraft that would propel the small company into a huge corporation was the Model 18 "Twin Beech", of which thousands were built from 1937 to 1969. On February 8, 1980, Beech Aircraft Corporation was purchased by the Raytheon Coporation and later renamed Hawker Beechcraft.

The city experienced a population explosion during World War II when it became a major manufacturing center for airplanes needed in the war effort. By 1945, 4.2 bombers were being produced daily in Wichita. In 1962, the Lear Jet Corporation began when the Swiss American Aviation Corporation bought the tooling for building a failed ground-attack fighter to Wichita and opened a plant at Wichita's airport. On February 7, 1963 assembly of the first Learjet aircraft began and the following year, the company was renamed the Lear Jet Corporation. In 1990, Canadian firm, Bombardier Aerospace purchased Learjet Corporation.

The city remains a major manufacturing center for the aircraft industry today, with Boeing, Hawker Beechcraft, Bombardier, Cessna, and even Airbus all having major manufacturing centers in town."

Wichita was also a significant entrepreneurial business center during the pre and post-war period, with Coleman, Mentholatum, Pizza Hut, White Castle, Taco Tico and Koch Industries having all been founded in Wichita. (Ironically, White Castle closed all of their restaurants in Wichita in 1938 and has not operated in the state of Kansas after a failed revival attempt in the Kansas City area in the early 1990s.) The entrepreneurial spirit of Wichita led to the creation of one of the first academic centers to study and support entrepreneurship at the Wichita State University Center for Entrepreneurship.

In October 1932, orchestra leader Gage Brewer introduced the electric guitar to the world from Wichita using an instrument developed by what would later become known as the Rickenbacker Guitar Company.

The Dockum Drug Store sit-in was one of the first organized lunch-counter sit-ins for the purpose of integrating segregated establishments in the United States. The protest began in July 1958 in Wichita at the Dockum Drug Store, a store in the old Rexall chain, in which protesters would sit at the counter all day until the store closed, ignoring taunts from counterprotesters. The sit-in ended three weeks later when the owner relented and agreed to serve black patrons, taking place 18 months before the more widely publicized Greensboro sit-ins in January 1960. A 20 ft-long bronze sculpture first announced in 1998 at a cost of $3 million marks the site of the successful sit-in, with a lunch counter and patrons depicting the protest.

External links

• Encyclopedia.com: Wichita

Black on White crime

• The Wichita Massacre (archive)
  • Reginald & Jonathan CARR
  • The Wichita Massacre — A Shameless Media Coverup