I landed in Wichita last night after a massive 20+ hour journey from my home in the UK. Having never ever even set foot in the state of Kansas before, I did some research study on the city I’m going to for the next week as part of TBEX Wichita, and here’s what I’ve found out up until now …
The location at the confluence of the Arkansas and Little Arkansas Rivers denotes the pre-settlement age of the city. It was a long-time trading and meeting point for nomadic people, with human habitation going back as far as 3000 BC. Today I strolled past The Keeper of the Plains, a renowned 44-foot steel sculpture by
Native American artist Blackbear Bosin that was set up at the river confluence in 1974 to honour the city’s Native American heritage. The city of Wichita is named after the Wichita people, who formed a settlement of yard lodges near the river confluence in
around 1863, after returning from Oklahoma. The very first irreversible non-Native American settlement was a trading post opened by James R. Mead in 1864, who partnered with Jesse Chisholm, after whom the Chisholm Path is named. Wichita established itself as a significant base along the primary route for driving Texas livestock north to Kansas railroads. called the Chisholm Trail.