Timeline of Kansas history

Source: Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.
Important dates in Kansas's history
Flag of Kansas
Flag of Kansas
July–August 1541
Coronado
explores Kansas
April 30, 1803
Louisiana Purchase; US buys most of Kansas
May 30, 1854
Kansas Territory organized
July 29, 1859
Constitution adopted by convention; prohibits slavery
January 29, 1861
Kansas becomes 34th state
August 21, 1863
Quantrill's Raid
on Lawrence
Spring 1879
Exodusters
February 19, 1881
First state to prohibit alcohol
1890s
Populist Revolt
July 1951
Great Flood of 1951
May 1954
Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka

The timeline of Kansas details past events that happened in what is present day

conquistadors
explored the unknown land now known as Kansas. It was later explored by French fur trappers who traded with the Native Americans. It became part of the United States in the Louisiana Purchase of 1803. In the 19th century, the first American explorers designated the area as the "Great American Desert."

When the area was opened to Euro-American settlement in the 1850s, Kansas became the first battlefield in the conflict in the American Civil War. After the war, Kansas was home to Wild West towns servicing the cattle trade. With the railroads came heavy immigration from the East, from Europe, and from Freedmen called "Exodusters". For much of its history, Kansas has had a rural economy based on wheat and other crops, supplemented by oil and railroads. Since 1945 the farm population has sharply declined and manufacturing has become more important, typified by the aircraft industry of Wichita.

Early history

1820s to 1840s: Indian treaties and westward trails

  • 1820s: Kansas area (by then popularly known as the Great American Desert) is set aside as Indian territory by the U.S. government and closed to settlement by whites.
  • 1821: After a brief period as part of Missouri Territory, Kansas returned to unorganized status.
  • 1821: Santa Fe Trail was opened across Kansas as country's transportation route to the Southwest, connecting Missouri with Santa Fe, New Mexico.
  • 1825, June 3: 20 million acres (81000 km2) of land ceded by the
    Kansa Nation
    to the United States, and the Kansa tribe are thereafter limited to a specific reservation in northeast Kansas.
  • 1825, June: Osage Nation was limited to a reservation in southeast Kansas.
  • 1825, November 7: Missouri Shawanoes (or Shawnees) are the first Native Americans removed to the territory by treaty.
  • 1827, May 8: Cantonment Leavenworth, or Fort Leavenworth, (named in honor of Henry Leavenworth) built just inside Indian territory to guard travelers on the United States' Western frontier. This was the first permanent settlement of white Americans in the future state of Kansas.
  • 1830: Indian Removal Act expedites the process of Indian removal.
  • 1831, August 30: Ottawa cede land to the United States and move to a small reservation on the Kansas River and its branches.
  • 1832, April 6: Ottawa treaty ratified.
  • 1832, October 24: U.S. government moves the
    Kansas
    .
  • 1832, October 29: Piankeshaws and Weas agree to occupy 250 sections of land, bounded on the north by the Shawanoes; east by the western boundary line of Missouri; and west by the Kaskaskias and Peorias.
  • 1833, September 21: Treaty made with the United States and the Otoe tribe cedes their country south of the Little Nemaha River.
  • 1836, September 17: The confederacy of the Sacs and Foxes in a treaty with the United States moved north of Kickapoos.
  • 1837, February 11: United States agrees to convey to the Potawatomis an area on the Osage River, southwest of the Missouri River.
  • 1840s: Section of the Santa Fe Trail through Kansas also used by emigrants on the California Trail and Oregon Trail.
  • 1842: Treaty between the United States and the Wyandots, the Wyandots moved to the junction of the Kansas and Missouri Rivers (on land that was shared with the Delaware until 1843).
  • 1844: The Great Flood of 1844, the biggest flood ever recorded on the Missouri River and Upper Mississippi River
  • 1846: Kansa reservation reduced by treaty.
  • 1847: Potawatomis are moved again, to an area containing 576,000 acres (2,330 km2), being the eastern part of the lands ceded to the United States by the Kansa tribe in 1846.

1850 to 1854: Washington opens the territory; Indian tribes sell their lands

  • 1850: Americans pioneers demand the entire area to be opened for settlement.
  • 1851, September 17:
    Arapahoe
    tribes negotiate with the United States for land in western Kansas (the current state of Colorado).
  • 1852: Congress begins the process of creating the Kansas Territory.
  • 1852, December 13: Representative from Missouri submits a bill organizing the Territory of Platte to the House: all the tract lying west of Iowa and Missouri, and extending west to the Rocky Mountains.
  • 1852: Wyandots attempts to establish a Territorial government in their section of Indian territory.
  • 1854: Nearly all the tribes in the eastern part of the Territory cede the greater part of their lands prior to the passage of the Kansas territorial act and are eventually moved south to the Indian Territory (the future state of Oklahoma.)
  • 1854, May 30: After intense debate the Kansas–Nebraska Act becomes law, establishing the Nebraska Territory and Kansas Territory, which delineate the borders of Kansas Territory set from the Missouri border to the summit of the Rocky Mountain range; the southern boundary was the 37th parallel north, the northern was the 40th parallel north. North of the 40th parallel was Nebraska Territory.
  • 1854: A new antislavery party is formed in protest: the Republican Party
  • 1854, June 10: Missourians hold a meeting at Salt Creek Valley, a trading post three miles (5 km) west of Fort Leavenworth, at which a "Squatter's Claim Association" is organized.

1855 to 1859: State formation

  • 1855: Massachusetts Emigrant Aid Company arrange and send anti-slavery settlers into Kansas.
  • 1855, March 30:
    Riley County
    ), and the first official legislature is overwhelmingly composed of pro-slavery delegates.
  • 1855: Kansas Territory violence and some open battles rise.
  • 1855, November 11: Topeka Constitution adopted by a convention of Free-Staters.
  • 1855, December 1: Small army of Missourians, acting under the command of Douglas County, Kansas Sheriff Samuel J. Jones, laid siege to the Free-State stronghold of Lawrence in what would later become known as "The Wakarusa War."
  • 1855, December 15: Topeka Constitution was approved by the people of the Territory but was never accepted as a legal document.
  • 1856, May 21: Pro-slavery forces led by Sheriff Jones again attack Lawrence, killing two men, burning the Free-State Hotel to the ground, destroying two printing presses, and robbing homes.
  • 1856, night of May 24 to the morning of May 25: Pottawatomie massacre; in what appears to be a reaction to the Sacking of Lawrence, John Brown and a band of abolitionists (some of them members of the Pottawatomie Rifles) murder five settlers, rumored to be pro-slavery, with broadswords north of Pottawatomie Creek in Franklin County, Kansas; Brown and his men flee to Iowa.
  • 1857, November 7: Lecompton Constitution adopted by a Convention convened by the official pro-slavery government.
  • 1858: Kansas Territory violence and some open battles slow.
  • 1858, April 3: Leavenworth Constitution adopted by the convention at Leavenworth by a new Free-State legislature.
  • 1858, May 18: People's elections pass the Leavenworth Constitution (while the Lecompton Constitution is still under consideration), but Congress refuses to ratify it.
  • 1859: Land tracts transferred to individual
    Chippewa
    families.
  • 1859, July 29: Fourth constitution drafted; the Wyandotte Constitution adopted by the convention.
  • 1859, October 4: People's election held; adopts Wyandotte Constitution, which outlaws slavery but is far less progressive than the Leavenworth Constitution.
  • 1859, end of the year: Bleeding Kansas violence virtually ceases.

1860s to 1890s

20th century

21st century

  • 2006: Restoration of Kansas State House Begins.
  • 2007, May 4-6: The city of Greensburg is destroyed by a tornado.
  • 2013: Restoration of Kansas State House Completed.
  • 2022: A tornado rips through Andover, Kansas

Notes

  1. ^ a b "Kansas Archeology Basics." Kansas Historical Society. Retrieved 25 Jan 2012.
  2. ^ a b c "Scott County: History." Scott County, Kansas. Retrieved 25 Jan 2012.
  3. .
  4. ^ "Lincoln's Hazel Avery Made State's First Flag". Lincoln Sentinel-Republican. March 28, 1996. Retrieved May 4, 2022.
  5. New York Times
    . November 10, 2020. Retrieved May 3, 2022.
  6. ^ "1952 Missouri Basin flooding" (PDF). United States Department of Interior. Retrieved May 4, 2022.
  7. ^ Schneider, Russell S.; Harold E. Brooks; Joseph T. Schaefer. "Tornado Outbreak Day Sequences: Historic Events and Climatology (1875-2003)" (PDF). Norman, Oklahoma: Storm Prediction Center. Retrieved May 3, 2022.
  8. ^ Larson, Lee W. "The Great USA Flood of 1993". National Weather Service. Retrieved May 3, 2022.

See also

Cities in Kansas

References

Further reading