Wichita — Edition Insights

had a population of 25,000; today its population exceeds 63,000, and there are good grounds to believe it will soon be a city of 100,000.

The location of Wichita was not an accident. Long before the white man came the Indians chose the junction of the Arkansas and Little Arkansas Rivers as a meeting place from which to conduct their campaigns and hunting expeditions into the Southwest territory. Before the railways reached Wichita, it was a center for the cattle trade of Oklahoma and Texas. In 1872 the first railway train entered Wichita over the Wichita Southwestern, a branch of the Atchison, Topeka & Santa Fe, and the city became at once a distributing point for the Southwestern country.

Today Wichita is served by six trunk lines, reaching into Western Kansas, Eastern Colorado, Oklahoma, Texas, and Mexico.

The development of Wichita in the last ten years has been many-sided. Perhaps its most important growth has been in the live stock and grain markets. In 1912, 14,465 cars of grain came to the Wichita market and 10,759 cars of live stock were received at the Wichita Union Stockyards. Wichita is the largest broom corn market in the United States, parts of Oklahoma and Western Kansas being peculiarly adapted for the growth of broom corn. The city’s standing as a distributing center is evidenced by its large number of jobbing houses, with business covering Southern Kansas, Oklahoma and parts of Texas and New Mexico. There are more than a hundred jobbing houses located here. Among these, ten firms deal in agricultural implements, six wholesale grocery firms, three dry goods jobbers, three wholesale drug houses.

Surrounding Wichita is one of the great wheat districts of the world and this fact, with the city’s superior transportation facilities, is largely responsible for the milling industry. The city’s flouring mills have a capacity of 7,000 barrels a day and their product is shipped to California and to New York, to Oregon and to European ports. This branch of Wichita’s manufacturing and commercial industry is growing steadily. Eight hundred men are employed in sash and door factories. In foundries 250 men are employed.

The faith of Wichita’s builders is shown in its wide streets. In the residence district a large portion of the street has been converted into parking and at many points branches of the trees meet in the middle, forming arches.

In public improvements the city is remarkably progressive. It has eleven parks with an area of 416 acres, and a public gathering place, known as the Forum, with a seating capacity of 5,500. In 1911 it ranked eighth among all cities in the United States in the area of new paving. Its office buildings—among them 10-story structures—are built on most modern lines; building permits in one year reached seven and one-half million dollars.

The water supply of Wichita comes from cylinders sunk forty feet beneath the bed of the Big Arkansas river. The water flows through a deep body of gravel before entering the cylinders, providing a supply of unusual purity. Air pumps syphon the water from the cylinders to cement reservoirs, where it is aerated before passing into the city mains.

The educational facilities of Wichita are complete. A new high school, the building costing $200,000, is at the head of the public school system. Friends University, Fairmount College and Mt. Carmel Academy cover the field of higher education. The main building of Friends University cost $265,000.

In its physical appearance, in the class of retail and wholesale business buildings and public structures, such as the city hall, government building and schools, Wichita gives the impression of a city twice the population. The completion of the New Union Passenger Terminal Station, with the elevation of railway tracks, adds greatly to this feeling. This terminal work cost two and one-half million dollars and was completed early in 1914.

In this book are illustrations of the new Passenger Terminal, of the business and residence sections of the city and of some of the more important public buildings—the whole a true picture of one of the most aggressive cities in all the Southwest.

The Wichita Union Terminal Station

The Wichita Union Terminal Station, opened in 1914, is used by the Santa Fe, the Frisco, the Rock Island, and the Orient lines. The building, 600 feet in length, has a frontage of 103 feet on Douglass Avenue, Wichita’s main thoroughfare. It is constructed of concrete, Colorado limestone and terra cotta, and is fireproof throughout. Trains enter by means of elevated tracks, connected with the waiting rooms by inclined planes.

Including the approaches and track elevations, the station cost approximately two and one-half million dollars.

The Concourse and Ticket Offices of the Wichita Union Terminal Station