Formed in the chaos of the beginnings of the Civil War, Kansas has transformed itself from the vast prairieland of the mid-19th century into the important crossroads of American industry that it is today. Yet the facts of Kansas' history are important to study and to remember, and as such, here are seven things you might not know about the Sunflower State.
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1. Before the U.S. was established, the area now known as Kansas changed hands between France and Spain and back again, and from 1830-54, it was actually designated an American Indian territory. It stayed that way until the run-up to the Civil War when pro-slavery supporters battled with their anti-slavery counterparts. Eventually, the anti-slavery faction won the battle, and Kansas entered the Union as a free state in 1861.
2. A few months after Kansas became the 34th state, the Civil War erupted, and considering the territory's history, it's not surprising that Kansas suffered more causalities than any other state in the Union Army. In the seven years leading up to Kansas' official inclusion into the Union, the state was known as Bleeding Kansas, because of the violent tensions between the pro-slavery and anti-slavery factions.
3. Since the beginning of the state's existence, women were allowed to vote in school district elections, and in 1912, eight years before the 19th Amendment gave all the country's women the right to vote, Kansas bestowed that right upon its female residents.
“When I read back through the history and the stories, it makes me feel really proud,” Melinda Henderson, president of the League of Women Voters of Lawrence-Douglas County, told the Lawrence Journal-World in 2012. “Kansas was really a hotbed of the suffrage movement.”
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4. The first women ever elected mayor of a U.S. city was Susanna Madora Salter, who was elected in the city of Argonia in 1887.
As the Topeka Capital-Journal points out, this occurred a few weeks after the state constitution was amended to allow women to hold office. That same year, a group of five women won all the seats on the city council in the city of Syracuse.
5. While Kansas was progressive with its voting rights for women, it wasn't that way for people who enjoyed an adult beverage. Almost 40 years before the 18th Amendment made prohibition the law of the land, Kansas banned alcohol from its state in 1881. Even after the national ban on alcohol was repealed, Kansas's state constitution decreed that the state would remain dry. It stayed that way until 1948.
6. For more than 130 years, Handel's "Messiah" has been performed every year on Palm Sunday in the city of Lindsborg. The tradition was started in 1882 by Swedish immigrants, and it's become one of the most famous yearly events in the state. "Granted, people do renditions and recordings of Handel's 'Messiah' all over the world, in all styles and variations," wrote the Wichita Eagle. "But none like Lindsborg's. And none with the rock-star staying power of Lindsborg's."
7. In a move that should have made dairyphiles abandon the state en masse, it was once (or still might be) illegal in Kansas to serve ice cream on top of cherry pie. Hardly anybody seems to know why.
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