Daily News

Today’s Flyover People column:

NAMES ON A MAP

When you unfold a Kansas map, there’s more to behold than towns and the roads between them.

The map has more than just the blue squiggles of creeks and rivers, more than those straight-line highways, which are oh-so-clever with their odd and even numbers.

Yessiree, our rectangular map is full of great place names. It has descriptive ones such as Elmdale and Cottonwood Falls. History steps onto the map with names of town founders, national leaders and Indian tribes.

Kansas is colorful: Silver Lake, Rose Hill, Blue Mound and Blue Rapids; Greenleaf, Greensburg, White Cloud and Whitewater.

Some communities even sparkle: Jewell, Gem and West Mineral.

We have Plains, Plainville, Prairie Village and Pretty Prairie. And there’s Hill City and Hillsboro (which were founded by men named Hill.)

You’ll find Paradise in Russell County. Pleasanton is near the Missouri border. And, according to the town slogan of a Dickinson County community, “There will always be Hope in Kansas.”

It amuses me that Dodge City is in Ford County. And, another place name that has nothing to do with cars, is the Phillips County town of Speed. Speed falls into the statesman category. It was named for James Speed, President Lincoln’s attorney general.

Horace Greeley of the New York Tribune was one of the most influential newspapermen in the mid-1800s. Greeley made famous the phrase “Go west, young man.”

Some of those westbound settlers remembered this journalist when it came to place names. In Anderson County, you’ll find Greeley. And, along the Colorado border, in Greeley County there’s a town named Horace. Tribune is the county seat.

If you take note of counties and their county seats, you could get lulled into the repetition: Pratt–Pratt, Smith–Smith Center, Marion–Marion, Kingman-Kingman, Atchison–Atchison, Russell–Russell.

But - not so fast. There are plenty of odd men out in the what-is-where business of Kansas.

Wichita is the county seat of Sedgwick County, not Wichita County – that’s Leoti. The city of Ottawa is in Franklin, not Ottawa County.

Lyons is not in Lyon County, nor is Chase in Chase County. Rice County has captured those two towns. And Johnson City isn’t within reach of Johnson County; they’re on opposite ends of the state.

In another story, Grenola is a tale of two cities. In 1879, the railroad passed between Greenfield and Canola, so the two Elk County towns picked themselves up and merged at the railroad tracks.

And as fate would have it, Kismet is in Seward County.

Settlers were not afraid of name-swiping. Thus, Kansas has Toronto, Havana and Zurich. Cuba, Peru and Denmark are also towns on our map.

It’s fun to say Schoenchen. Schoenchen is a town in Ellis County, founded by Volga-Germans. Rush County has Liebenthal, also started by the German-Russian Catholics. In Saline County, Falun and Smolan have a Swedish connection.

And, of course, Kansas has dozens of beautiful Native American names stamped on the map, places such as Tecumseh, Tonganoxie and Towanda.

From the Arikaree Breaks in the Northwest to Chetopa in the Southeast, Indian names ground Kansas in its indigenous past.

A number of counties are named after Indian tribes including Cheyenne, Comanche, Wyandotte and Pawnee. Wabaunsee County is named after an Indian chief.

As for rivers, Ninnescah comes from an Osage-Sioux word meaning clear water. French explorers named the Arkansas River after the Arkansa Indians.

Several communities were named for their connection to the Arkansas River: Great Bend, Arkansas City and Little River.

Every name has a history - Niotaze, for example. But that’s a story for another day.

For further reading: “1001 Kansas Place Names” by Sondra Van Meter McCoy and Jan Hults.

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Cheryl Unruh writes Flyover People, a column about Kansas topics, published every Tuesday in The Emporia Gazette. Copyright 2008 Cheryl Unruh.

Filed under: columns, life on the ground on February 26th, 2008