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Lower Plains: Kansas, Nebraska

area. But most of those people are actually Missourians, not Kansans. The metropolitan area spans both states, stretching over a total of 15 counties. Kansas City, Missouri, forms the biggest chunk of the metro- politan area. Its population is close to 460,000. Kansas City, Kansas , is much smaller. Just over 145,000 peo- ple live here. Other notable cities in Kansas’s share of the metropolitan area are Overland Park and Olathe . The Kansas City metropolitan area as a whole hosted a thriving jazz scene in the 1920s and 1930s. Nowadays, it is famous for its barbecue. To the west of Kansas City is Topeka , the capital of the state. It’s Kansas’s fourth-largest city, with over 127,000 residents. Located along the Kansas River, Topeka boasts a number of important historical landmarks, including the Brown v. Board of Education National Historic Site. The city of Lawrence was once a hotbed for jayhawkers—the abolition- ists who clashed with slavery support- ers across the Missouri-Kansas border in the “Bleeding Kansas” era. Today,

This marker near the town of Lebanon indicates the geographic center of the contiguous United States.

Lawrence (population 87,643) is home to the Kansas University Jayhawks. That’s the nickname for KU’s sports teams and their fans. One of the most famous Jayhawks was Dr. James Naismith, the inventor of bas- ketball. He was a faculty member at KU, Kansas’s largest public university, from 1898 to 1937.