Kansas Weather Forecast

A state in the Midwestern United States

Topeka; Topeka's name comes from the Omaha Indian expression for a good place to dig potatoes" ( meaning root vegetables they found here. The city came into being when Cyrus K. Holiday arrived with the intention of building a railroad. Topeka became not only the terminus for the Atchison, Topeka and Santa Fe but the state capital as well.

You'll find a steam locomotive bearing Holiday's name in the kansas Museum of history. They are exhibits on the Bleeding kansas period and the Civil War, and Plains Indian dwellings, including a buffalo-hide tepee and a grass lodge.

Lawrence; first settled in 1854, Lawrence was a center of the Free State Party in the midst of a proslavery stronghold. Between 1855 and 1859 it teetered on the verge of war as the two factions vied for power. The antislavery forces won out. Then, in 1863, the town was sacked and burned by William Clarke Quantrill and his Confederate raiders.