Kansas is a landlocked state bordered by Nebraska to the north; Missouri to the east; Oklahoma to the south; and Colorado to the west.
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Kansas is named after the Kansas River, which in turn was named after the Kansa Native Americans who lived along its banks.
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For thousands of years, what is Kansas was home to numerous and diverse Native American tribes.
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When it was officially opened to settlement by the U S government in 1854 with the Kansas–Nebraska Act, abolitionist Free-Staters from New England and pro-slavery settlers from neighboring Missouri rushed to the territory to determine whether Kansas would become a free state or a slave state.
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The abolitionists prevailed, and on January 29, 1861, Kansas entered the Union as a free state, hence the unofficial nickname "The Free State".
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Kansas, which has an area of 82, 278 square miles is the 15th-largest state by area and is the 36th most-populous of the 50 states, with a population of 2, 940, 865 according to the 2020 census.
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Name Kansas derives from the Algonquian term, Akansa, for the Quapaw people.
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The first European to set foot in present-day Kansas was the Spanish conquistador Francisco Vazquez de Coronado, who explored the area in 1541.
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In 1803, most of modern Kansas was acquired by the United States as part of the Louisiana Purchase.
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Southwest Kansas, however, was still a part of Spain, Mexico, and the Republic of Texas until the conclusion of the Mexican–American War in 1848, when these lands were ceded to the United States.
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Kansas Territory stretched all the way to the Continental Divide and included the sites of present-day Denver, Colorado Springs, and Pueblo.
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Kansas was admitted to the Union as a free state on January 29, 1861, making it the 34th state to join the United States.
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Kansas was roundly condemned by both the conventional Confederate military and the partisan rangers commissioned by the Missouri legislature.
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Kansas is underlain by a sequence of horizontal to gently westward dipping sedimentary rocks.
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In Kansas, there are currently 238 species of rare animals and 400 rare plants.
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Thus, Kansas is the country's ninth or tenth sunniest state, depending on the source.
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Kansas is prone to severe weather, especially in the spring and the early-summer.
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Many African Americans in Kansas are descended from the Exodusters, newly freed blacks who fled the South for land in Kansas following the Civil War.
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Kansas is the location of the second Baha'i community west of Egypt, when the Baha'i community of Enterprise, KS was started in 1897.
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Residents of Kansas have a life expectancy near the U S national average.
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Southeast Kansas has a unique history with a number of nationally registered historic places in this coal-mining region.
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Westward along the Interstate, the city of Russell, traditionally the beginning of sparsely-populated northwest Kansas, was the base of former U S Senator Bob Dole and the boyhood home of U S Senator Arlen Specter.
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Eastern Kansas is part of the Grain Belt, an area of major grain production in the central United States.
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Several large aircraft corporations have manufacturing facilities in Wichita and Kansas City, including Spirit AeroSystems, Bombardier Aerospace, and Textron Aviation (a merger of the former Cessna, Hawker, and Beechcraft brands).
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Major companies headquartered in Kansas include the Garmin, YRC Worldwide (Overland Park), Payless Shoes (national headquarters and major distribution facilities in Topeka), and Koch Industries (with national headquarters in Wichita), and Coleman (headquarters in Wichita).
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Kansas is home to three major military installations: Fort Leavenworth, Fort Riley, and McConnell Air Force Base (Air Force).
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Since oil prices bottomed in 1999, oil production in Kansas has remained fairly constant, with an average monthly rate of about 2.
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In 2003, Kansas had three income brackets for income tax calculation, ranging from 3.
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Kansas made cuts to education and some state services to offset lost revenue.
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Kansas argued that it was because of "low wheat and oil prices and a downturn in aircraft sales".
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Only 26 percent of Kansas voters approved of his job performance, compared to 65 percent who said they did not.
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Kansas is served by two Interstate highways with one beltway, two spur routes, and three bypasses, with over 874 miles in all.
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The highway passes through the eastern section of Kansas, traveling through Baxter Springs, Pittsburg, Frontenac, Fort Scott, Louisburg, and the Kansas City area.
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Kansas has the country's third largest state highway system after Texas and California.
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Kansas is served by four Class I railroads, Amtrak, BNSF, Kansas City Southern, and Union Pacific, as well as many shortline railroads.
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The board consists of five Kansas lawyers elected by other Kansas lawyers and four members selected by the governor.
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Since the 1930s, Kansas has remained one of the most socially conservative states in the nation.
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Kansas was the first state to institute a system of workers' compensation and to regulate the securities industry (1911).
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Kansas permitted women's suffrage in 1912, almost a decade before the federal constitution was amended to require it.
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Kansas was at the center of Brown v Board of Education of Topeka, a 1954 Supreme Court decision that banned racially segregated schools throughout the U S, though, infamously, many Kansas residents opposed the decision, and it led to protests in Topeka after the verdict.
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Kansas supported Dewey in 1948 despite the presence of incumbent president Harry S Truman, who hailed from Independence, Missouri, approximately 15 miles east of the Kansas–Missouri state line.
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In 2008, Democrat Governor Kathleen Sebelius vetoed permits for the construction of new coal-fired energy plants in Kansas, saying: "We know that greenhouse gases contribute to climate change.
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Kansas was sworn in as governor in 2011, Kansas's first Republican governor in eight years.
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Kansas has not elected a Democrat to the U S Senate since the 1932 election, when Franklin D Roosevelt won his first term as president in the wake of the Great Depression.
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Only non-Republican presidential candidates Kansas has given its electoral vote to are Populist James Weaver and Democrats Woodrow Wilson, Franklin Roosevelt, and Lyndon Johnson.
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Kansas was the adult home of two losing Republican candidates.
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Education in Kansas is governed at the primary and secondary school level by the Kansas State Board of Education.
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Rock band Kansas was formed in the state capital of Topeka, the hometown of several of the band's members.
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Singers from Kansas include Leavenworth native Melissa Etheridge, Sharon native Martina McBride, Chanute native Jennifer Knapp, Kansas City native Janelle Monae, and Liberal native Jerrod Niemann.
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Kansas was the setting of the 1965 best-seller In Cold Blood, described by its author Truman Capote as a "nonfiction novel".
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Kansas has been the setting of many award-winning and popular American films, as well as being the home of some of the oldest operating cinemas in the world.
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The Kansas Speedway located in Kansas City hosts races of the NASCAR, IndyCar, and ARCA circuits.
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