105 counties; the smallest county is Wyandotte, with 153 square miles, but first in population, with 100,068 inhabitants, including Kansas City, the state's metropolis and the seat of the second largest livestock market and of the second most extensive meat-packing industries in the world. The last census, of 1910, showed the population of the state to be 1,690,049.
There then were 133 cities and towns having a population of 1,000 or more and twelve of these cities had 10,000 or more each, as follows: Kansas City 82,331; Wichita 52,450; Topeka 43,684; Leavenworth 19,363; Atchison 16,429; Hutchinson 16,364; Pittsburg 14,753; Coffeyville 12,687; Parsons 12,463; Lawrence 12,374; Independence 10,480, and Fort Scott 10,463.
Drainage. The state is watered and drained by several important non-navigable streams, viz: The Kansas (or Kaw), Arkansas, Republican, Solomon, Blue, Smoky Hill, Marais des Cygnes, Saline, Neosho, Medicine and Cimarron, besides innumerable smaller rivers and creeks. The larger streams in the main flow eastward or to the southeast, finding their outlets in the Missouri or the Arkansas.
Education. The laws are liberal and just, favoring sobriety, morality, industry, wholesome living and home-making. The manufacture and sale of intoxicating liquors, except for medical, scientific and mechanical purposes, is forever prohibited by a constitutional provision adopted in 1880. Intelligence is encouraged by liberally providing educational institutions and providing liberally for their support. Besides high schools in numerous counties and in all the cities and larger towns and the many colleges and academies, the state in 1910 had 9,300 free public-school houses, where 398,746 pupils were enrolled and 13,467 teachers employed, at an annual outlay of $5,773,342 for salaries. The schoolhouses and school-property are valued at $20,891,590. The University of Kansas, at Lawrence, takes rank with like institutions in older states, and the same is true of the Kansas Normal, at Emporia, while the Agricultural College, at Manhattan, is claimed to stand, in attendance, at the head of such colleges in the United States, having about 1,700 students (1910-11) and a teaching staff of 80. Many important denominational schools and colleges are liberally endowed and supported, and have a large attendance. The school for the education of deaf-mutes is at Olathe; that for the education of the blind, at Kansas City. Besides these there are the state's school for feeble-minded youth at Winfield; Soldiers' Orphans' Home at Atchison; Soldiers' home at Dodge City; Industrial reformatory at Hutchinson; Industrial school for girls at Beloit; Industrial school for boys at Topeka; Hospitals for the insane at Topeka and Osawatomie; Hospital for epileptics at Parsons; and penitentiary at Lansing. The federal government maintains a military prison and a national soldiers' home near Leavenworth.
Of railroads Kansas has more than 10,838 miles. Of the 105 counties one hundred have one or more railroads, and, excepting seven, all county-seats have one or more. Admirable natural roads, passable everywhere throughout the year, afford expeditious and comfortable travel and enable the marketing of farm-products at all seasons.
- F. D. COBURN.
Kansas City, Kan., an important railway center and county-seat of Wyandotte County, at the junction of the Kansas and Missouri Rivers, which separate it from Kansas City, Mo. The town was organized in 1886 by the union of Wyandotte, Armourdale and Armstrong, and incorporated as a city. It has communication with Kansas City, Mo., by cable and electric roads. It is a great center of the live-stock trade of the west, and here is one of the largest packing-houses in the United States. In addition to the immense live-stock trade carried on here, there is a considerable trade done in grain, with many large grain-elevators and other facilities for handling and storing wheat and other grains in large volume. Tnere also are several steam and flour-mills of larg capacity, railroad car shops, machine shops, smelters, iron and steel works, cotton mills, a cement works, terracotta works, a journal-box factory, a malleable casting foundry, elevators, soap and candle factories. The city has excellent public and parochial school-systems and a magnificent high-school, and is the seat of Kansas City University, a college of medicine and surgery, St. Margaret's and Bethany hospitals, besides many fine public buildings. Some 15 bridges here connect the two rapidly-growing and populous cities. The population of Kansas City, Kan., is 82,331.
Kansas City, Mo., is located in Jackson County at the junction of the Kansas with the Missouri River, and the second largest city in the state, covering 27 square miles of territory. The older portion is built upon high hills formed by the bluffs of the two rivers, and thence sloping south and east into a delightful undulating country, which has been greatly beautified by parks and boulevards. These consist of 39 miles of boulevard, 227 acres in parkways, and 2,255 acres in public parks.
Originally Kansas City was simply a river-landing about two and a half miles north of Westport. Here a town was laid out and the first lots sold in 1846. The town soon became the center of a thriving trade with New and Old Mexico and with the Indian tribes in the territory west and southwest.
