Kansas State Records

The state of Kansas is also called "The Sunflower State (official); The Wheat State". Their moto is Ad astra per aspera. The official languages are English. Before statehood it was called Kansas Territory. Kansas's government is comprised of the Governor, who is currently Sam Brownback (R), Lieutenant Governor, who is currently Jeff Colyer (R), Senators: Pat Roberts (R), Jerry Moran (R), House Delegation: Tim Huelskamp (R) Lynn Jenkins (R) Kevin Yoder (R) Mike Pompeo (R) (list).The legislature is Kansas Legislature.

Total area for Kansas is 82,277 sq mi (213,096 km2) (Ranked 15th in the U.S.). The width is 417 miles (645 km) and the length is 211 miles (340 km). In terms of latitude and longitude we have: 37° N to 40° N and 94° 35′ W to 102° 3′ W. According to the 2010 United States Census, the total population is 2,871,238 (2011 est) (Ranked 33rd in the U.S.). The highest point is Mount Sunflower 4,041 ft (1232 m) and the lowest point is Verdigris River at Oklahoma border 679 ft (207 m).

The abbreviations used for this state are KS US-KS. Additional information and the official website of the state is found at www.kansas.gov.

Kansas (i/ˈkænzəs/) is a U.S. state located in the Midwestern United States. It is named after the Kansas River which flows through it, which in turn was named after the Kansa Native American tribe, which inhabited the area. The tribe's name (natively kką:ze) is often said to mean 'people of the wind' or 'people of the south wind,' although this was probably not the term's original meaning. Residents of Kansas are called 'Kansans.'

For thousands of years what is now Kansas was home to numerous and diverse Native American tribes. Tribes in the Eastern part of the state generally lived in villages along the river valleys. Tribes in the Western part of the state were semi-nomadic and hunted large herds of bison. Kansas was first settled by European Americans in the 1830s, but the pace of settlement accelerated in the 1850s, in the midst of political wars over the slavery issue. When officially opened to settlement by the U.S. government in 1854, abolitionist Free-Staters from New England and pro-slavery settlers from neighboring Missouri rushed to the territory to determine if Kansas would become a free state or a slave state. Thus, the area was a hotbed of violence and chaos in its early days as these forces collided, and was known as Bleeding Kansas. The abolitionists eventually prevailed and on January 29, 1861, Kansas entered the Union as a free state. After the Civil War, the population of Kansas grew rapidly, when waves of immigrants turned the prairie into farmland. Today, Kansas is one of the most productive agricultural states, producing high yields of wheat, sorghum and sunflowers. Kansas is the 15th most extensive and the 33rd most populous of the 50 United States.

For millennia, the land that is currently Kansas was inhabited by Native Americans. The first European to set foot in present-day Kansas was Francisco Vásquez de Coronado, who explored the area in 1541.