Wichita

Wichita is a city in south-central Kansas, United States, where the Little Arkansas River joins the Arkansas. Its aircraft factories earned it the nickname Air Capital of the World.

The Wichita people had a village at the meeting of the rivers in the 1860s, and Jesse Chisholm traded with them from a post nearby; the cattle trail named after him later ran past the town. Town status came in 1870, and for a few years Texas longhorns were driven here to the railhead, when Wyatt Earp served on the police force. Clyde Cessna, Walter Beech and Lloyd Stearman built airplanes in Wichita in the 1920s, and each later gave his name to a company. White Castle opened its first hamburger stand in the city in 1921, and Pizza Hut began in a small brick building in Wichita a few decades later.

Textron Aviation, based in Wichita, builds Cessna and Beechcraft airplanes, from single-engine trainers to business jets. Koch Industries, a privately held company of fertilizers, paper and chemicals, has its head office on the north side of the city.

The Keeper of the Plains, a steel statue by Blackbear Bosin of the Kiowa and Comanche peoples, stands at the meeting of the rivers on a rock base ringed with fire pots. Old Cowtown Museum rebuilds the early town with houses, a saloon and a blacksmith shop moved from around the region. The first Pizza Hut building was later moved to the campus of Wichita State University, where it holds a museum of the chain.