A History of Kansas

by Anna E. Arnold

Upper, Deep Shaft Coal Mining. Lower, Surface Coal Mining.

Work of the Agricultural College. The Agricultural College in its early years laid but little stress on agricultural and industrial work, but in 1873 its plan of work was changed and it soon began to fulfill its real mission. A few years later the usefulness of the College was greatly increased by the establishment of an experiment station where investigations are carried on in such matters as the testing of seeds, the introduction of new crops, the rotation of crops, dairy and animal husbandry, butter and cheese making, orchard and crop pests, stock foods, and diseases of live stock. Branch experiment stations have, in later years, been established at Hays, Garden City, Dodge City, Tribune, and Colby, where problems peculiar to the western part of the State are studied. The Agricultural College is doing a great work in gathering information and bringing it to the people by means of bulletins, lectures, correspondence courses, demonstration trains, demonstration agents, and farmers’ institutes. Kansas was one of the first states to hold a Farmers’ Institute in connection with its Agricultural College. This work was begun in 1869, and the purpose was then, as it is to-day, to promote the knowledge of scientific agriculture.

One of the Early Flouring Mills.

Manufactures Based on Agriculture. The agricultural resources of Kansas have led to the development of a number of manufacturing industries. One of the oldest of these is milling. Among the first needs of the settlers of the new country was a means of grinding their corn and wheat into meal and flour for family use. This caused the building of small gristmills in every community. Most of them were built along streams and were run by water power, though a few of the early ones used wind power. In later years steam has come to be generally used. After the introduction of the hard wheats, the wheat crop came to be much more certain, the acreage increased, and the milling industry grew. Kansas flour is now sold in all the important markets of the world, and Kansas is one of the leading states in the milling industry.

Meat packing has held first place among the manufacturing industries of Kansas for a number of years. Kansas City, the second greatest packing center in the United States, is the chief market for Kansas live stock, but there are several packing houses in different parts of the State. Creameries, canning factories, and pickling works represent other industries that have been developed to make use of our agricultural products.

The Mineral Industries. Although Kansas is not one of the great mining states, it has a number of valuable mineral resources, the chief of which are coal, lead, zinc, oil, gas, salt, building stone, and gypsum. These resources form the basis of an important part of the industrial life of the State. The coal and gas have made possible a number of manufacturing industries.

Coal. As early as the Territorial period it was known that there were coal fields in Kansas, and small amounts of coal were mined in Crawford and Cherokee counties. Immediately after the Civil War the settlers in the southeastern part of the State gave much attention to the digging of coal, some of which lay so near the surface that it could be uncovered with a plow. Within the next few years coal was found in Osage and Leavenworth counties and in the vicinity of Fort Scott. These places produced large amounts, but Crawford and Cherokee counties soon came to be the leading coal districts of the State. At the present time about nine-tenths of the Kansas output is mined in these two counties. The importance of the coal fields of Kansas lies not only in the value of the coal, but in the stimulation of the growth of manufactures. Many industries can be carried on only by means of large amounts of fuel to supply power. The development of a number of such industries in Kansas has been made possible chiefly by the cheap and abundant supply of coal.

Lead and Zinc. Before Kansas was organized as a Territory lead mining was an important industry in southwest Missouri, but not until 1876 was it discovered that the lead and zinc field extends into the southeast corner of Kansas. Prospecting began at once and thousands of people were soon on the ground. Although zinc was found in abundance with the lead, but little attention was paid to it. Within a few years, however, it was found that the abundance of coal made the smelting of zinc profitable, and zinc soon assumed the leading place. For a number of years much more zinc than lead has been produced. A large amount of ore from the Missouri mines is shipped to the Kansas smelters, and the smelting of lead and zinc, but particularly of zinc, has come to be one of the most important of our mineral industries. The development of the gas field furnished a cheaper and more abundant fuel than coal, and much of the smelting was soon being done where gas could be used. In later years gas is less abundant and there is a tendency to return to the use of coal.

Oil and Gas. Although prospecting had been done in earlier years, the real development of oil and gas in Kansas began about 1892, with the discovery of the big Kansas-Oklahoma field. The oil and gas area is included within an irregular strip, forty to fifty miles wide, extending from Kansas City southwesterly into Oklahoma. It is frequently spoken of as the “oil and gas belt.”