Named after the coal mining town in Pennsylvania, Pittsburg, Kansas, became the coal mining capital of the Great Plains in 1870. Although underground mining was used to harvest the coal, strip mining was invented and first used in Kansas in 1876.
Wheat is not native to the US but had been planted as a hobby crop on the eastern seaboard. This changed in 1874 when Mennonite immigrants from Russia brought Turkey Red Winter Wheat to Kansas. It thrived in the plains and was instrumental in making Kansas the leading wheat-producing state and the breadbasket of the world.
In 1876, color distinction was abolished from Kansas law. In 1954, this legislation was imperative in Brown vs. the Board of Education which opened all schools in the US for desegregation.
September 27, 1878, marks the last battle of the Indian Wars in Kansas. The U.S. Cavalry engaged a band of Northern Cheyenne led by Chief Dull Knife and Little Wolf. This band of 284 braves, women and children were escaping from a reservation in Oklahoma. After beating back the soldiers, the band killed settlers in Decatur County, and fled to Nebraska.
In 1880, Kansas became the first state in the US to pass a bill prohibiting the manufacture, sale, or gift of all forms of intoxicating liquor. When you consider a high percentage of the population were transient workers, (5,000 cowboys that passed through Abilene every day) it is not surprising such a bill first passed in Kansas. Some of these workers tended to drink, fight, shoot and ask questions later. Debbie's maternal great-grandfather was shot walking home from work when a fight broke out in a tavern and a stray bullet from a gunshot killed him and left his wife and three young children without a means of support. When Debbie was growing up in the 1950-60s, Smith County was still a dry county.
Not only did the state lead the country into prohibition but Carry A. Nation from Medicine Lodge was a vocal, bar-smashing, national leader of the temperance movement.
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